


Let the Silver Voices Guide You

by idoltina



Series: Holiday Land [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Nightmare Before Christmas Fusion, F/M, Holidays, Minor Prince "Charming" James | David Nolan/Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard, Once Upon an Advent Calendar 2016, Outlaw Queen Advent Calendar 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:16:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8763808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idoltina/pseuds/idoltina
Summary: Robin works in Christmas Town; Regina, Halloween Town. They meet, they fight, they flirt, they fall in love. An AU very vaguely inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas.





	1. October

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [onceuponanadvent](http://www.onceuponanadvent.tumblr.com)’s 2016 calendar. Original posting can be found [here](http://onceuponanadvent.com/vault/gifts/day3-gift2/) on the Advent Calendar's website.
> 
> **Warnings:** adult language, consumption of alcohol, mentions of previous character death, sexual situations

**October**

He is _late_.

It’s fifteen minutes past the hour the hearing was set by the Council, which means that in exactly forty-five minutes, Regina needs to be back in Halloween Town to oversee the constable of ravens due to be released to the Surface, and any delay in their take-off cuts into the already too-little time she has to brief this year’s host of ghouls and ghosts on what is and isn’t allowed in a haunting. Given last year’s near-possession mishap, that’s not exactly a briefing she can afford to cut corners on. And yet here she is, at fifteen past the hour, _fuming_ as the seconds tick by because the representative from Christmas Town has the _audacity_ to waste her precious time and be late.

Oh, how she wishes inter-holiday sabotage wasn’t against the rules.

Her adversary finally arrives at seventeen past the hour, breathless and disheveled as he bustles his way up the aisle toward his table and sets his satchel down with an unceremonious _thump_. “I’m so sorry,” he sighs heavily, not even bothering to look at her or the Council directly as he unfurls his scarf from around his neck. “Our project coordinator got pulled into a last minute meeting with Mother Nature, something about weather patterns, they were scrambling to find a replacement --” He shrugs out of his thick winter coat, dusting snow all over his table and chair and the floor, and Regina wrinkles her nose in disapproval at the mess. “I didn’t even know about this until about twenty minutes ago, I rushed over as fast as I could.”

“That’s all right, Mister…”

“Locksley,” the man supplies, flashing a beaming smile up at the council member who’s just addressed him. “Robin Locksley, Official Lists Handler. I’m afraid they didn’t have time to catch me up to speed on what the hearing’s supposed to be about, but I’m sure we can come to some of agreeable solution, yes?” he ventures, turning his smile onto Regina and holding out a hand in offering. Regina, for her part, merely narrows her eyes and arches an eyebrow in what she hopes comes across as sheer annoyance, and she feels a little thrill of satisfaction at the way his smile falters in return, a sharp crack in his insufferable Christmas cheer veneer. “Perhaps not,” he mutters, retracting his hand and turning his attention back to the Council.

“If you’d like to proceed,” the same council member suggests, clearly suppressing a sigh, “Miss Mills?”

Clearing her throat, Regina directs her attention to the council, fingers dancing delicately over the top of her neatly stacked folders, itching to get to the point where she can make her argument. “Those of us in Halloween Town,” she begins, making a point to keep her voice level and even, “would… _appreciate_ it if those in Christmas Town -- particularly in the Spirits and Marketing department -- could exhibit a little restraint in spreading their own holiday cheer up to the Surface until the start of November.”

“Hang on,” Locksley interjects, recapturing her attention. “Are you suggesting that we are actively campaigning to get people on the Surface in the holiday spirit prematurely?”

“Yours is not the only _holiday_ around,” Regina hisses under breath, fingers flexing anxiously atop her pile. “And yes,” she says, raising her voice a little. “Humanity takes it upon themselves to start preparing for Christmas earlier and earlier every year. Where do you _think_ they get that itch from?”

“Okay, setting aside the fact that you’re referring to Christmas cheer as some sort of, I don’t know, _disease_ ,” Locksley drawls, earning him a scathing look from Regina, “I’m afraid you’ve got it all backwards. Humanity has trended toward treating holidays as a business for a long time now -- which, incidentally, is _what we do_ \-- and it’s getting harder and harder to maintain actual spirit in the festivities every year. We’re not trying to push our holiday up to the Surface early, we’re just trying to _keep up with them_.”

“It is _the middle of October_ ,” Regina snaps, finally spinning on her heel to face him properly. “We haven’t even had our proper holiday celebration yet this year and Christmas is already being shoved into the faces of people on the Surface. We can’t be expected to do our jobs effectively if we aren’t allowed the allotted time and space to do it.”

Locksley’s brow wrinkles a little at that, but before he can do much more than draw a breath to try and respond, the Head of Council is rapping sharply on the bench with their gavel. “Alright, that’s enough,” he dismisses, sounding tired. Locksley has the decency to look a little like a child being chastised, but Regina works her jaw furiously even as she turns her attention back to the bench. “Much as we can understand your frustration, Miss Mills, I think we’re all in agreement that Mister Locksley here has a valid point.”

“ _What_?”

“We don’t control humanity, Miss Mills,” another council member -- the same woman from before -- reminds her, gentle and placating and honestly a little sycophantic.

“That’s not even the point I was trying to --”

“And _furthermore_ ,” the Head of Council interjects, talking over her and narrowing his eyes at her rather carefully, “if we _were_ to try and issue some sort of injunction to prevent humanity from getting a leg up on the Christmas season, it would be interference. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of our laws in that regard, Miss Mills.”

Regina takes a sharp, narrow breath through her nose and shifts her gaze down to the pile stacked in front of her, hands shaking in agitation. “If I could just _make my presentation_ \--”

“Miss Mills,” the woman interrupts, and there is something absolutely final in her voice, “don’t you have more important things to do with your time? It is October, after all. I’m sure you have plenty of work to do.”

The protest she wants to make -- _I can’t even do my job properly given the state of things_ \-- dies in the back of her throat as her eyes flit from one council member to the next. She doesn’t give up easily -- _she doesn’t_ \-- but she can see it in their eyes and the weathered lines of their faces, the lack of spark and the walls firmly erected around their own self-righteous, biased decision-making. This isn’t a fight she’s going to win, not today at least, and wasting any more time here -- giving Locksley more opportunity to get under her skin and make her fucking furious -- is pointless.

The _fine_ she grits out is barely audible, and she’s reaching for her own satchel and storming back up the aisle without so much as another word.

She’s downstairs and out of the Oversight building and halfway down the forest path to the Grove when she hears him -- Locksley -- calling after her. “Miss Mills, wait!”

Against her better judgement, Regina comes to a halt, fingers curling into fists as she tries valiantly to keep her temper under control. She spares a quick glance at her watch -- half past the hour -- before forcing a tight smile and turning on the spot to face him. " _What_?”

He’s half-breathless by the time he catches up to her, coat and scarf strewn about his person haphazardly. “You left these,” he explains, holding up her pile of folders in offering. “I thought you might want them back.”

“A lot of good they’ll do me now,” she mutters, snatching them out of his hand and shoving them carelessly into her bag.

“A simple thank you would suffice,” he replies slowly, clearly cautious and hesitant at being met with such unrestrained ire.

“A _thank you_ ,” she laughs, high and falsely bright. “You want me to _thank you_ for being late to the hearing I took precious time out of my day to attend after weeks of petitioning to get the damn thing in the first place? For immediately interrupting me and undermining me at every turn? For somehow getting the Council to agree with your ridiculous, off-topic, threadbare argument in the space of maybe five minutes? For rendering all of my hard work _pointless_?”

Locksley’s jaw jumps -- he’s clearly unnerved by her wrath -- but his patience, it seems, is far less tried at the moment than hers. “Miss Mills,” he sighs, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, “I understand your frustration -- believe me, I do -- but I was only trying to clear the air in there. I was just doing --”

“-- just doing your job?” Regina says derisively. “Please, spare me the dog and pony show about how considerate you are when we both know you’re the same as everyone else in Christmas Town -- a hypocrite.”

She’s barely turned around and taken two more steps down the path when he speaks again; this time, his voice is low, tense around the edges. “I _beg_ your pardon?”

She pauses, just briefly, to throw a glance over her shoulder and roll her eyes at him. “You have taken up more than enough of my time and my patience today, Tinsel Town, so --”

“And _I_ think,” he counters quickly, catching up with her and planting himself firmly in her path to prevent her progress, “that I _made_ time for you today, so you can surely spare another minute or two and do me the courtesy of elaborating.”

Regina huffs incredulously and shakes her head, looking away for half a moment so she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the way he gets under her skin. “Unbelievable,” she mutters. "You Christmas folk are all the same, you know that?” she bites out, carefully retraining her gaze on him. “You spend the entirety of your immortal existence preaching about spreading joy and peace and kindness and charity, but apparently that only ever makes its way to the Surface because I sure as hell don’t see any of it shared around here.” He blinks a little at her, clearly caught off guard at the accusation, and she decides that the sight of his slightly agape mouth will have to do as far as satisfaction goes for now. Quickly, she brushes past him, ignoring the way she knocks more snow loose from his coat --

“That’s rich,” he calls after her, a slightly darker edge to his tone, “coming from someone like you.”

Again, she stops on the path, the Grove just ahead; he’s getting to her -- they both _know_ he’s getting to her, and yet she cannot help herself. Fire behind her eyes, she whirls back around. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Your entire holiday is built around scaring the living daylights out of people and pretending to be someone you’re not!” he argues, voice pitching a little high as he takes a stride or two forward.

“Wow,” she scoffs, anchoring a hand on her hip. “That is honestly the most basic, ill-informed, dismal understanding of what our holiday is actually --”

“Oh, and your understanding of ours is rooted in petty jealousy,” he drawls, and it’s his turn to brush past her, now, hands adjusting his scarf as he goes.

“Is it _petty_ ,” she counters, spinning once more and stalking forward as quickly as she can in her heels so she can be the one to block his path, this time, “to be rightfully outraged at the fact that there is such a _clear bias_ toward your holiday that the rest of us have to struggle to make ends meet -- _to get a word in edgewise_?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Locksley muses, corner of his mouth twitching up with the ghost of a near-smile. “It seems to me like you’ve gotten in plenty.”

Regina narrows her eyes, breath coming shallow and sharp through her nose as she levels a glare up at him. That’s not what she meant -- he _knows_ that’s not what she meant, the fucking _presumption_ , honestly. He merely quirks an eyebrow at her, clearly waiting for her to make that exact argument, and it’s so infuriating to the point that she finds herself swallowing down the words just so she doesn’t give him the satisfaction and merely ends up staring him down, instead.

In hindsight, she thinks, that was probably just as poor of a decision because now that she’s looking at him -- really, properly looking at him -- all she’s left to do is take note of his features: the way his (well-groomed) facial hair hugs the sharp, angular curve of his jaw; the playful twist of his lips as he bites back a full smile; the easy way his hair falls over his brow; the sheer spark behind those too-blue eyes and _fucking shit_. It’s bad enough that he’d presented a kind front at first, worse that he’d managed to match every volley she’d spiked at him; the bastard does _not_ get to be this fucking attractive, too.

She forces herself to swallow as inconspicuously as possible and tries to divert her attention elsewhere: the snow dusting his lapels; the glittering gems of a brooch she’d missed earlier; the hint of chocolate and mint she can smell on his breath and no, no, absolutely not, _fuck_. She glances over him once more, searching for something, anything, spots a sprig of something caught in his scarf and the first thing out of her mouth is, “You smell like pine trees.”

Locksley’s smile falters, at that, his nose wrinkling in confusion. “Yes,” he answers slowly, tucking his hands in his coat pockets. “I live in Christmas Town. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” she snaps, short and quick. “Nothing, it’s not -- nevermind,” she mutters, taking a step back and tucking her hair behind her ear. “I don’t have time for this. I have actual work to do, unlike some people.” He worries his lip between his teeth, the spark instantly back in his eyes (he likes this, the asshole, likes getting under her skin), but Regina forces the rest of the words out of her mouth before he can draw her back in for another round. “Enjoy your free inflated advertising.”

She barely catches a glimpse of his face as she turns toward the Grove -- there’d been a flash of disappointment there, she thinks (she knows) -- but she chooses not to dwell on it, puts one foot in front of the other instead.

When she pulls open the jack o’ lantern tree door to Halloween Town, Regina is very much not in any holiday spirit at all.


	2. November

**November**

At the fringes of the post-Halloween party in the town’s square, Robin rocks up on the balls of his feet and scans the crowd, tin tucked carefully under his arm. He’s been here nearly half an hour already, and he never stays more than a full hour; practically no one in Christmas Town does. November signals the start of crunch time for them, and with mere weeks until their own holiday is due to arrive, all of them end up working ridiculous amounts of overtime. For Robin’s part, he usually makes an appearance -- says hello to the friends and contacts he has in other towns, takes in the general splendor of the costumes but doesn’t don one himself (doesn’t have the time or the inclination, frankly), nabs his usual guilty pleasure sweet and then heads back to work.

Tonight, though. Tonight he’d meant to do something different.

A final cursory glance around the square yields nothing, however, so it’s with a sigh that he glances down at the tin tucked under his arm and worries his lip between his teeth. He could simply send it to her as a package tomorrow or later; that’d certainly be the simpler option. But he’d brought it with him tonight for the express purpose of giving it to her in person, and the presentation of it -- the speech he’d had planned -- isn’t something he thinks will go over nearly as well in a note, no matter how nice his penmanship might be. Still, it doesn’t seem as though he has much of an option at this point. He’s not likely to make his way back here before Christmas, and by then he thinks his olive branch might be too little too late.

So it’s with sagging shoulders and a heavy heart that Robin adjusts his hold on the tin and ducks back into the crowd. He weaves his way through the web of people, past the fountain at the center of the square, and makes a beeline for the stand set up at the other edge of the square. He manages a polite enough smile at the young woman managing the booth as she boxes up the candied apple for him, but he’s back to a permanent frown as he retreats through the small cemetery just off of the main town.

He’s just at the cemetery gates that lead to the entrance path when he glances over in the direction of the graveyard proper and ends up doing a double take, brow knitting in confusion at the sight of someone perched atop the curved hill in the center of the graveyard. He squints a little, trying to discern any features beyond a vague silhouette, but the most he can manage to make out is the shape of a woman, the flip of hair over her shoulder. Hope blossoms in his chest, small and unbidden, and he makes his way tentatively toward the graveyard, careful to keep his steps light. The din of the party grows more faint the farther away he gets, but he can still hear it by the time he reaches the bottom of the hill, the music and chatter a low hum in the background.

But there, seated at the top of the hill with her knees pulled up to her chest, is a quiet Regina Mills looking out over the far side of the graveyard. And under the light of the moon, Robin finds that she looks particularly breathtaking.

Well, _damn_.

He shakes his head a little, takes a deep breath to steady himself and tells himself to _focus_. He has a purpose in this -- in seeking her out -- and precious little time to do it in; he needs to make every moment count. He takes a step up the hill, then another and hesitates, unsure if he’s perhaps invading her privacy or not. She’d clearly left the party and come out here for a reason; given that she’s alone, Robin’s not sure she’s going to welcome company.

And, well. She wasn’t all that thrilled with him when they last parted ways. He can’t imagine her opinion of him has improved.

He opts for clearing his throat to announce his presence instead, fingers flexing anxiously around the stacked tin and box in his hand. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

She starts, just a little, and blinks up at him, but her surprise is quickly replaced with obvious annoyance as she rolls her eyes and looks away, lips thinning into a line. “The fact that you even said that means you’re very much aware that you _are_ , and yet you’re doing it anyway.”

The way that particular little zinger gets under his skin almost immediately is equal parts intriguing and infuriating, but Robin forces himself to take a measured breath and not take the bait. Her misconceptions are still in play; that much is obvious. They’re part of the reason he’s _here_ , after all. “You weren’t at the party.”

“Brilliant deduction.”

Robin’s mouth twists, caught between a smile and a frown, but he gets the message loud and clear: she would really rather be doing anything other than talking to him. It may serve them both better if he keeps this short and simple -- and, hopefully, sweet. “I was looking for you,” he begins, forging ahead as he adjusts the tin in his hands. “I wanted to --”

Regina’s _shh_ is a hushed imperative that cuts through the air, sharp and silencing as she arches up a little, leaning forward on bended knee. Robin’s mouth snaps abruptly shut, breath caught in his lungs at the way she narrows her eyes and looks out over the graveyard, searching. He tries to follow her gaze, squints against the stretching darkness to try and discern whatever it is that she sees. But there’s nothing out there, nothing beyond the places the moonlight touches across the ground, nothing in the forest that --

The breath is pulled from his lungs like a long, thin string at the sight of a small, slight, shimmering spectre peering out from behind one of the closest trees. He’s barely aware of the way his grip slackens on the objects in his hands, only just manages to clutch tight again right before they fall out of his hands. Regina, for her part, only seems to grow more focused at the appearance of the apparition, features softening a bit as the vision comes into view. His heart sinks in his chest a bit when he realizes that it’s a child -- a young woman, really, no older than perhaps fifteen. Her features aren’t quite as clear, now that she’s no longer inhabiting her body, but he can make out enough as she tiptoes barefoot across the dirt toward Regina’s now outstretched hand. Her hair is long, silky and shimmering and dark as her eyes and skin, all a stark contrast to the blurred and vibrant colors of her clothes -- a bodice of teal green, a skirt long and wavy and yellow as the sun he’s sure she never sees anymore. She too, seems transfixed and tethered, drawn forward by magic most mystical, and Robin finds himself following her gaze with ease.

Regina’s called forth some of her own other-worldly magic, a swirl of sparkling stars dancing over her open palm. It’s almost magnetic, the way the ghost of the girl draws near to it -- to _them_ \-- but before she’s even halfway upon them, Regina redirects her magic out into the open and lets it take flight. The magic circles the girl -- around her waist, under an arm, between her ankles -- before coiling in upon itself. It sparks, vibrant and electric for a half a moment, before unfurling, and this time Regina’s magic takes form as water, weaving waves through the air as it washes over and away from them, back toward the main path that leads out of Halloween Town.

And like a moth to a flame, the girl follows.

Breathless and more than a little bewildered, Robin turns his attention back to Regina to find her settling back down, her expression a little softer than before. “What was that?”

She falters a little at that, but there’s less of a harsh edge to her expression now even as she turns away from him again and resumes her steady study of the graveyard and parts beyond. “A soul,” she sighs, rolling her shoulders back uncomfortably.

“A… _child_ ,” he elaborates, chancing a step nearer to her.

“Yes, well,” she says, clipped and a little short, “they _are_ the ones called on the first day.”

Robin’s brow furrows in confusion as he contemplates her meaning. There’s a snippet of something in the back of his mind pinging in response to the implication, foggy and forgotten, but it’s not until he climbs up a few more steps that he manages to put the pieces together -- sees the lit candle and the picture frame angled away from him, the delicate porcelain skull dangling from her necklace. “Is this for… Dia de los Muertos?” he asks, tentative and careful, the words feeling unfamiliar and clunky on his tongue. “You’re… celebrating the Day of the Dead?”

“I’m not _celebrating_ ,” she snaps, scathing and sharp as she darts daggers in his direction. “I’m supervising.”

He glances back over his shoulder at the general splendor of the party now in full swing back in the town square, the pops of oranges and purples against the black suddenly a little less vibrant than before. The overall din of the party -- the shrieks and the laughter and the xylophonic music -- is less sharp, muted to the point of almost sounding like it, or maybe he, is underwater. The practical part of him tries to root himself in that; after all, the minutes he has until he has to return to his own work are dwindling the longer he stands here. But there’s another part of him that can’t help feeling a little… indignant on her behalf, honestly. Her holiday has come and gone for the year; she should be enjoying the spirits with the rest of her town. Carefully, he turns his attention back to her, awkwardly shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “That’s why you’re not at the party,” he surmises. “You’re… working.”

“Please,” she drawls, derisive and dry as her eyes shift toward the festivities for a half-second before resuming her watch. “As if anyone in this world would make room for something as non-mainstream and off-color as this.”

It’s almost as good as magic, the impact her words have on him. There’s so much discontent there, bubbling beneath the surface and _oh_ , how he identifies with that. It’s not as if that’s news to him -- she’d been more than clear about it when he’d endured her wrath last month -- but there’s something new there he can’t quite place -- something altogether _more_ in the wanting.

(He is fully aware that this flare of kinship is more than likely amplified simply because it’s getting close to Christmas, and Robin is nothing if not… _faithful_ to the true spirit of his holiday.)

But there’s little he can share with her that comes without risk, not to mention he’s almost certain that she wouldn’t be particularly warm to any attempts at developing said unspoken kinship, so Robin merely shuffles a little closer and gestures at the ground next to her. “May I?”

“I don’t know _why_ you bother asking,” she sighs heavily. “We both know you’re just going to do it anyway.”

He bites back a whole host of retorts that comes to mind -- namely that it’s interesting she seems to know him so well when she’s hardly spent any time with him at all -- and sinks down carefully next to her, precariously balancing both the box and the tin in his hands before setting them on the ground in front of him. “So,” he says, looping his arms around his legs and training his gaze out over the graveyard, “if it’s doesn’t fall under your holiday’s official jurisdiction or your own job description, and you’re not celebrating, then what… exactly are you doing out here?”

Another sigh, but this one sounds far less irritated than the ones that have come before it. She sounds almost… tired, like she doesn’t even quite have the energy to match him tonight. “The days that follow… All Hallow’s Eve, while not celebrated by everyone, are days when some souls are called to the Surface,” she says, surprising him with what seems to be an actual answer. “It’s not as many as it used to be, but there are still a reasonable -- respectable amount. Not all of those souls make the journey without some difficulty. Some are deterred or distracted. Others become… lost,” she settles on, and even in his peripheral vision, Robin can see the way she softens considerably at the word.

(Somewhere in his own soul stirs the memory of Marian, a too-thin frame and eyes a drowning storm.)

“So you guide them,” he supplies easily, finally putting the pieces together. “You help ensure they find their way to the Surface, if they’re called.”

She’s quiet for a very long moment before inhaling sharply, and he doesn’t have to look at her to know she’s grown more uncomfortable. “Look, Candy Cane,” she says thinly, but even the intended insult lacks the same sort of malice and heat he’s come to expect of her in the exactly two encounters they’ve shared. “I’m sure you’ve concocted some cloying and condescending commentary about how _cute_ you think this obvious waste of my time is, but I am really, _really_ not in the mood tonight, so --”

“Actually,” Robin muses, cutting her off at the pass, "I think it’s honestly kind of admirable. I mean it,” he insists, sensing the impending protest or scathing reply when he hears her inhale sharply again. “No one else thought to do this sort of thing here.”

He feels her eyes on him, burning, but he doesn’t look over at her -- not yet. “So you’re saying I’m a special snowflake?”

A grin spreads onto his face at that, he genuinely cannot help it, and he fails spectacularly at biting it back when he looks back over at her. “No,” he says, chuckling lightly, “although if I weren’t so sure that you’d take it as an insult, I might be at least a little bit tempted.”

“High praises,” she hums, giving him a once over, “from someone who thinks I prefer masquerades to mirrors.”

Robin has the decency to look a bit sheepish; that one, at least, is well-deserved. “About that,” he ventures, gaze drifting toward the candle on her other side. “Earlier, I was trying to explain -- I came to the party tonight in search of you.”

“Funny,” she says, bemused, “earlier, I assumed you’d come to the party just so you could comment on how basal it was by comparison. But seeing as how you’re taking one of my candied apples home with you, I think you’d be an awful hypocrite if you did.”

He glances down at the box resting atop his tin, lips curving into a smile at the admission. “They’re the reason I come, most of the time,” he confesses. “I look forward to them all year.”

She’s quiet for a long moment, and then, with a great sigh, “Well at least you have _some_ taste.” He chuckles, low and warm, but offers up no reply, and when he manages to look back up at her again, she’s already long since redirected her gaze back out over the graveyard. There’s focus in her eyes, but it’s muddled; she’s distracted now, it seems, but he’s willing to venture that perhaps his intrusion isn’t quite so unwelcome as it was before. “What do you want from me?” she asks at last.

His smile turns wry at that, weighed down with a little guilt, but Robin swallows his pride and does at long last what he came here to do. “I want to apologize.” She glances sideways at him, sharp and questioning, but Robin holds up a hand to keep her from giving voice to her disbelief. “I can hazard a guess at what you’re thinking, but I promise I mean it. No matter how misdirected your frustration and ire were, I didn’t have to react the way I did. And as… _much_ as your notions of -- what did you call us, Christmas folk? -- were a bit off the mark, they hardly warranted me returning fire, particularly when I don’t actually know you all that well. I mean, clearly,” he murmurs derisively, gesturing at the graveyard.

“So you’re…”

“Sorry, yes,” he laughs, unfurling a little and lolling his head to the side a little to level a smile at her. “I’m sorry.” She purses her lips, just barely, but he can tell she’s fighting bemusement, can see it all over her face. But there’s something almost… warm in her hidden exasperation, a softening around the edges that bears the mark of something much more permanent, genuine. He sobers a bit at that, tries not to dwell on the ways it’s like looking in a fucking mirror, and leans back on his hands, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. “I could tell how frustrated you were,” he adds quietly. “And I know -- I know you don’t think Christmas folk like me have any reason to harbor discontent with the system, but I promise you, I know how it feels.” She merely arches an eyebrow at him, prompting him back into lighter territory. “I know you probably don’t believe me --”

“I really don’t,” Regina murmurs, just barely suppressing a laugh.

Robin rolls his eyes and makes a noise of derision. “Look,” he sighs, “I may be a bit more… optimistic than most, but I’m not naive enough to think a mere apology means we’re suddenly going to be friends.”

“Then what are you hoping to accomplish here?”

“A truce,” he offers. “If we happen to cross paths again, I’d hope we can at least be civil, if not cordial.”

She worries her lip between her teeth as she studies him, her curiosity clearly piqued, but it’s her turn to catch him by surprise, it seems, and she nods vaguely at the stacked squares in front of him. “Is that what the tin is for?” she guesses. “Peace on Earth and good will toward men and all that?”

“Something like that,” Robin chuckles, sitting up and gently moving the tin out from under the box containing his apple. “A peace offering, an olive branch -- call it what you will,” he says, holding it out for her to take. She hesitates, briefly, but she _does_ take it, and Robin takes that as a win. “They’re nowhere near as good as your apples,” he allows, ducking his head a bit to better see her face as she pries the lid off of the tin, “but hopefully they’ll suffice.”

And as she stares down at the tin full of homemade gingerbread cookies, Robin swears that Regina Mills actually _smiles_. “You’re probably not wrong,” she agrees, “but I suppose they’ll do.”


	3. December

**December**

As Christmas Eve begins to come to a close, the air in the forest proper feels decidedly colder than normal. It won’t last -- it never does -- but Regina leans into the sharp snap the same way she does every year, back reclined against a tree trunk outside of the grove as she gazes up at the open portal to the Surface. It’s not quite midnight in Holiday Land time but it’s definitely nearing there; she can see it in the way the northern stars shift overhead, can feel it in the way her fingers grow stiff and numb as the temperature drops more steadily still. The practical part of her knows she should bring gloves when she does this -- she pulls on a thick sweater and wraps a scarf around her neck, after all -- but there’s another part of her, quiet and buried and not at all forgotten, that relishes in the way she loses feeling in her fingers.

For all of her immortality, that lack of feeling is the closest she comes to feeling alive every year, and with it comes the illusion that maybe she’s not quite so far removed from the Surface as she really is -- has been for over half a century, at this point.

For one night, she can pretend that those she loved (loves, still) are not all dead and gone.

This year’s star-gazing session is nearly over, though; the closer midnight creeps, the closer it is to Santa’s return, and Regina always makes a point to be out of the forest and back in Halloween Town before he descends through the portal. She’s not trying to avoid being seen -- it’s not like she’s doing anything illegal, after all -- but with his arrival comes the sharp reminder that there is a great divide she cannot cross, and she’d prefer not to have jolly old Saint Nick ruin her carefully constructed little illusion.

She’s just about at the point where she’s considering sitting up properly and trying to force feeling back into her body when a shimmering light appears on one edge of the portal, small and blinking and breaking up the stationary stars. She narrows her eyes, brow wrinkling a little as she tries to figure out what it might be; it’s too early for Santa’s return, and no one else from Christmas Town accompanies him on his flight to the Surface. She isn’t left wondering for long, though; in the blink of an eye, the light streaks down in a long thin line, and if it weren’t for magic, she thinks it would burn a hole in the ground. The light shimmers, glows and sparkles and swirls a storm of dust up in the air.

When the light fades and the dust settles, Robin Locksley is left standing in its place.

She relaxes a little at the sight of him and thinks nothing of it at first. He’s the Official Lists Handler, after all, so it’s not out of the realm of believability for him to make a quick trip to the Surface to help Santa on Christmas Eve. But that sense of ease is quickly replaced with suspicion pinging off inside of her as she watches him tiptoe his way through the forest, weaving in and out of the treeline as he makes his way to the Grove. Her suspicion only increases when he gets close enough for her to make him out properly; there’s a cloak draped over his arm, a hefty-sized bag slung over his shoulder, and, much to her surprise and utter amazement, a simple mask of green covering his eyes.

Whatever he was doing on the Surface _clearly_ wasn’t sanctioned by his boss.

Amused and more than a little delighted, Regina lolls her head to the side and watches him creep closer to the Grove, the ghost of a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. It’s not until he’s about to pass through the two trees just to the right of her to duck into the Grove that he seems to notice she’s there at all, and the way he freezes at the sight of her is almost comical. Slowly, he shifts his gaze to meet hers, anxiety clear in every line of his face, but all Regina does is merely arch an eyebrow at him. She can see the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows hard, watches the way he tries to straighten up and school his expression into something more neutral and offers her a wavering smile. “Miss Mills.”

She purses her lips in a vain attempt not to smile and resolutely does not move from her position on the ground. “I’d call you Mister Locksley,” she muses, “but with that getup, I figure you have some sort of masked caper identity I should use instead.” He frowns a little at that, reaches up an idle hand to touch his face and chuckles out a soft _oh_ when he realizes he hasn’t taken the mask off. He tugs it off gently now, looking a little less anxious but not entirely so, and when it’s clear he’s fumbling for the right thing to say, Regina takes a little pity on him and gives him an out. “I’d ask what you were doing on the Surface, but I think it’s pretty clear that it was something… naughty.”

He bites his lip at that, cheeks tinging pink a bit, and adjusts the bag over his shoulder. “And I suppose you,” he muses, “being the law-abiding citizen you are, aren’t all that inclined to not blow the whistle on me.”

Regina gives him a once over, takes in the odd combination of vigilante-like items and notes the folded up piece of paper sticking out of his pants pocket. She is, admittedly, a little irritated at the fact that he can seem to sneak up to the Surface without incident or reprimand, though she’s not all that surprised; he is from Christmas Town, after all. But there’s more there, beneath her irritation. The pieces put together make it very clear that he had a specific purpose in going to the Surface tonight, and considering that this is the same man who went out of his way to play nice last month in an effort to be more _honorable_ , Regina finds that maybe she wants less to call him out on his hypocrisy and more to find out what he’s been up to. “Honestly? I think my curiosity might be outweighing my moral compass right now.”

“You realize that makes you a bit of a Halloween Town stereotype, don’t you?” he points out. Regina pointedly levels him with a look but otherwise doesn’t reply. It’s his turn to give her a once over, clearly trying to figure out what she’s playing at, but any insecurity she detects in his expression is gone almost immediately, replaced instead with those same sparkling blue eyes and a bemused smile as he leans against the tree nearest to him. “I’ll tell you what,” he offers. “If I let you in on my… dirty little secret, you do me the favor of considering the possibility that I do, in fact, understand your frustration with the system.”

The fact that he’s working outside of the system at the moment -- or was, a few minutes ago -- is proof enough of that, Regina thinks, though she certainly isn’t going to voice the thought aloud and give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s right. Still, the fact that she can even acknowledge it to herself -- the fact that she _believes_ him, even without knowing the details of his Surface escapades -- is enough to pull the memory of him from their last encounter to the forefront of her mind. She remembers the smell of gingerbread, remembers _admirable_ and wonders if maybe he was being sincere, after all.

(She considers, for half a moment, that she may be a bit too cynical for her own good, but she resolutely chooses not to dwell on it.)

In the end, she settles on compromise. She scoots a little to the left, making space for him to sink down next to her and lean against the tree, but she refuses to give him the satisfaction of a verbal invitation. She glances pointedly at the spot she’s just created for him, earning her a smile and a shake of his head, but he takes the offer for what it is and moves to sink down next to her, depositing his items on his other side. He leans against the tree in kind, arm and leg just shy of brushing against hers, and looks up at the sky above like she’d done before his arrival.

“Before I was recruited, I was… not in a very good place,” he begins, clearly choosing his words carefully. Regina only just barely stops herself from sucking in a breath; she hadn’t quite expected the conversation to be this… personal, she supposes. Being frustrated with the system is one thing; talking about living outside of it -- about _before_ \-- isn’t something she’s even so much as entertained since nearly fifty years ago, and even then, that had been more of an exception than a general rule. Locksley -- _Robin_ doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment, or at least feels that there’s benefit to his sharing something so intensely private. “The world can be a very… ugly and senseless place,” he murmurs. “Bad things happen to good people, and there’s often very little anyone can do to change anything.” And at that, Regina tries to flex the cold back into her fingers in an effort to keep herself present.

(The memory of headlights in her eyes is fresh and sharp and receding, a film playing in reverse the way only regret and guilt can make it move.

She sucks in a gasping breath, nineteen and terrified and strapped down, down, down, and the incoming light reflects off of Daniel’s eyes.)

Regina releases the breath one frame at a time, and the words spill like subtitles from her lips, reckless and unbidden. “I know the feeling,” she murmurs.

Slowly, Robin glances over to meet her eyes, and for the space of a moment, the air around them seems to stand still.

But time, Regina knows, only moves forward, and the moment is gone as quickly as it had consumed them, bringing her back to the present.

“When I was recruited, Santa promised me that this job would be a way I could make a real difference,” Robin admits, dropping his gaze to his lap, fingers toying with the frayed ends of his scarf. “Imagine my surprise a couple of years in when I realized that most of what the job entails basically makes me a glorified desk jockey.”

“I can’t imagine you expressing such discontent to Santa, of all people,” she muses.

It works: he chuckles, albeit just barely, but there’s something altogether melancholic about the way he smiles at her, the spark dim in his eyes. “I’m afraid not,” he allows. “But it was… _hard_ to be optimistic about it -- still is, in some ways. The Lists are so much more than just _names_. They’re people. They’re stories. And hearing them, seeing them, even if it’s just secondhand, makes it hard to distance myself from the Surface. The world doesn’t just _change_ just because you see it from a different point of view. It’s all still the same. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people. There isn’t any rhyme or reason for so much of it.”

“You do realize you sound like a complete Christmas Town stereotype right now, don’t you?” she teases, trying to ease the tension a little.

It doesn’t quite land the way she’d been hoping. He doesn’t so much as smile, eyes shifting to look out over the forest this time while he pulls his thoughts together. “I handle those Lists daily, you know,” he says. “After a while, I realized that I could keep them in my possession a little longer than normal on some days and no one would even bat an eye.”

Her heart picks up pace at that, tension bleeding into her lungs as she surveys him carefully. “You don’t… _change_ the Lists, do you? Because that would be --”

“-- interference, yes, I know,” he acknowledges. “Don’t worry, I’m not that mad.”

The corner of her mouth quirks up. “But you _are_ , a little?”

His lips mimic hers without meaning to, she can tell, but he doesn’t look over at her again, just reaches for the ribbons of his mask and rubs the material between his fingers. “There are plenty of people who don’t deserve a place on the List they’re on.”

“That’s kind of subjective, don’t you --”

“Oh, fuck subjective,” Robin snaps, and Regina’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. He looks back in her direction but is very clearly avoiding meeting her eyes. “A twelve year old boy steals food to feed his family and ends up on the naughty list. A woman habitually lies to her grandmother out of unkindness but ends up on the nice list because she volunteers for the less fortunate half a dozen times a year. An elderly person with cancer ends up on the naughty list because they start a few harmless fires. Don’t tell me the system is _flawed_ \-- it’s fucking _broken_.”

Slowly, Regina lets out a breath and lifts her head away from the tree. He really, _really_ wasn’t kidding when he said he understood her frustration. He’s angry, that much is obvious -- angry and fired up and far more cynical than she ever would have supposed him to be, but there’s more there, too, underneath. She can hear it in the edge of his voice, can see it in his eyes, the way the blue burns bright. Even beneath all that bitterness, he’s still almost belligerently optimistic, seeking out fairness where there is none.

(She should really not find his infuriated indignance so attractive.)

“So what… exactly do you do with the Lists if you don’t change them then?” she asks, _more_ than curious now. “If you’re not interfering --”

“It’s not interference… exactly,” he clarifies, clearly hedging. “I just… spend a little extra time with the Lists so I can do a little digging, get to know some of the people on it a bit better. Santa makes the final call with the Lists. I just… happen to make my own. Off book, as it were. I mean, if anything, it’s only indirect interference,” he argues dismissively, relinquishing the ribbons. “What good is all this magic we’ve got if we’re not using it in a way that’s actually useful? Besides, a little balancing of the karmic scales never hurt anyone.”

Regina bites her lip and tries very hard not to laugh. “I think the people you cherry pick off the nice list to screw over would probably argue otherwise.”

“I don’t cause any harm,” Robin insists, and at that, he does look her directly in the eyes. “I promise, I’m not that cruel. I just… try to look out for those the system lets down or forgets about. I mean, I’m sure you can understand that, given what you do for Dia De Los Muertos.”

And she does -- he _knows_ she does, he saw her use her own magic to help guide the lost and the forgotten just last month. But this, what he does is altogether very different. He’s not working within a loophole system but outside of it entirely, and while the part of her that met him back in October should find his blatant abuse of his power to be abhorrent, she’s surprised to find that she’s decidedly… not. Frankly, it’s clever, and more than risky, and while the whole Christmas-like charity thing is a little nauseating, it’s also admittedly… admirable.

(And braver, a small part of her soul whispers, than she could ever hope to be.)

Slowly, her lips curve into a smile, and this time she fails at biting back the laugh that bubbles out of her. “You’re kind of a regular old Robin Hood, you know that?”

He groans, looks away and leans his head back against the tree, but in spite of his annoyance Regina can still see a smile spreading on his face. “Six years I’ve managed to keep this a secret,” he bemoans, “and the _first_ time I so much as dare to share it --”

“I’m sorry, I had to,” she laughs. “You’re using the tools the system equips you with in the first place to protest the way it works. It doesn’t really get a whole lot more prince of thieves than that.”

“Then what does that make you, I wonder,” he muses, flashing a grin at her. “You work outside of the system as much as I do, you just do it a little differently.” She works her jaw a little, shakes her head, but her smile doesn’t falter. “Look, all I’m saying is that the system itself isn’t structured in a way that allows us to do a whole lot. It’s western and secular and influenced rather heavily by a singular religion. I mean, do you know the number of people who are left off of the Lists simply because they’re of a different faith? Or none at all? There are so many people I _can’t_ help because the system won’t even bother to keep track of them at all. On the basis of that alone, I don’t think that’s very much in the holiday -- sorry, Christmas spirit at all. How is it kind to disregard people who could benefit from us?”

Her smile softens a bit at the self-correction, heart fluttering in her chest at the thought that her pithy remark back at the hearing landed with him this way. “I’m sure the Heads would argue that you have to pick and choose your battles on that front.”

Robin considers her carefully, eyes narrowing a bit in discernment. “And would you agree?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

He softens considerably at that, eyes warming and smile all too knowing, and Regina finds herself glad when he looks down at his lap again if only so she can try to pull herself together. “Would I be correct in assuming, then,” he ventures, “that given such a sentiment, you’re… _not_ going to turn me in?”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” she promises. “But if you’d like to keep it altogether, I’d suggest we both start heading home. It’s got to be almost midnight, and I’m sure you’d rather not be caught out here by your boss.”

“True,” Robin laughs. He’s quiet for half a moment as he looks down to reach for his things, but he pauses halfway there, his fingers brushing against hers instead. Her breath doesn’t catch in her chest but it’s a near thing, and she can’t seem to tear her eyes from the point of contact. “Miss Mills -- Regina,” he murmurs, and she trains her eyes more deliberately still at where his hand is touching hers, absolutely does _not_ think about the fact that this -- tonight, with him -- is the first time in _years_ anyone other than her holiday Head and _Ruby_ (and Belle, more recently) have called her by her given name. “Thank you,” he says. “Really. I doubt almost anyone else down here would be half so understanding.”

“Yes, well,” she says quickly, pulling her hand away and forcing herself to take a breath, “you did ask me to entertain the idea that we might have something in common.”

“That’s as close as I’m going to get to _you’re right_ from you, isn’t it?” he muses, and it’s _a simple thank you would suffice_ all over again without the flaring tempers and stinging wounds.

“Probably,” she agrees.

They’re both quiet as they push themselves to their feet, Robin gathering up his mask and cloak and depositing them in his bag. Regina dusts the dirt from her jeans and clutches fitfully at her scarf just to keep her hands occupied. She’s only just starting to regain some of the feeling back in her fingers (does _not_ credit it to the surprising warmth of Robin’s skin against hers), but she finds she doesn’t mind as much as she would have, earlier. Together, they turn into the Grove and move toward the center, and it’s only then that an odd thought occurs to her, slowing her steps as she glances back over her shoulder at the clearing beneath the portal. “Earlier,” she ventures, looking back at him once more, “you said you’d been doing this for six years.”

“Majority of the time I’ve been here, yeah,” he affirms, adjusting his grip on the handle of his bag. “Why?”

“I come out here on Christmas Eve every year, too,” she confesses, quirking an eyebrow at him. “I’ve been down here a lot longer than you. How have we not crossed paths like this before now?”

“Timing, probably,” Robin suggests. “I ran into some hiccups on the Surface this year, was afraid they’d make me late in returning. I think I was a bit earlier tonight than I normally am.”

“By which point, I’m probably already long gone,” she surmises. “Funny, how things work out sometimes.”

“Yes,” he echoes faintly, “Funny.” His eyes flick down, just for the space of a second, and -- oh.

_Oh._

Regina is not the only one, it seems, who’s struggling with the annoying appeal of attraction.

(She does not, under any circumstances, think about how _long_ it has been since she’s even entertained the idea, much less acted upon it.)

But his eyes are back up to hers in a flash as he pulls himself together, and that same hint of general bemusement is back in his tone, his eyes, his lips. “I’d be willing to wager,” he hums, taking a half-step toward her, “that perhaps sharing such a secret as this one means we’re setting ourselves up for something a bit beyond being simply… cordial.”

She barks out a laugh, smile breaking onto her face as she shakes her head, equally bemused. “I think keeping your secret makes me your _accomplice_ more than your friend, technically.”

Robin’s answering grin is like a smack against her sternum, startling breath from her. “Who says they have to be mutually exclusive?”

Regina worries her lip between her teeth, considering him for a moment. It’s not… entirely out of the realm of believability, she supposes. Even with their admittedly rocky start, it’s clear that they have at least a handful of things in common. They play off of one another well, even if it is a bit like dancing in circles around each other, and it strikes Regina, then, just how _rare_ of an occurrence that’s been for her since her recruitment -- fuck, since _before_. She is professional almost to a fault, she knows (has strategically orchestrated it that way, _likes_ it that way, or has until… now, anyway). She’s good at her job and gets along with her Head of Holiday, entertains Ruby’s occasional attempts to get her to _have an actual social life for once, honestly_ , but she doesn’t have… this, whatever _this_ is. She hasn’t had anything remotely close for a long, long time.

And in spite of most of her better judgement and every tool she’s employed to keep herself from suffering the same fate she had on the Surface, when it comes to Robin Locksley, it seems, Regina Mills is in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I suppose they don’t have to be,” she says at last, relenting. “But I’m going to warn you right now -- it takes a pretty high level friend to get to the point of, let’s say, unlocking tragic backstory.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs. He pauses for a beat, worrying his own lip between his teeth before he says, “Alright, how about this? The post Christmas party is a bit of a whirlwind for those of us in Christmas Town. We’re all still sort of recovering and preparing for our hiatus. Plus, there’s an ugly sweater contest we all get pretty competitive about that I am _determined_ to win this year.” Another pause, this time so he can lean in conspicuously and drop his voice to a faux-whisper that is entirely unnecessary. “Between you and me, my assistant -- while very hard working and absolutely charming most of the time -- beats me out for this thing every year and is sort of insufferably smug about the whole thing.”

“I can’t _imagine_ what that must be like,” Regina drawls, teasing.

“Oh, I think you’d find her pretty insufferable year round,” Robin muses. “She’s one of the only underage recruits we have -- fifteen and entirely precocious and sneaks kahlua into her cocoa when she wins the blasted thing just so she can spend the rest of the evening with a shit-eating grin plastered to her face every time we cross paths.”

“Okay, that’s pretty bad,” Regina allows, chuckling.

“But,” he ventures, taking another half-step toward her and _fuck_ , she is not going to be able to hold out all that long if he keeps insisting on encroaching upon her personal space, “the post New Year’s party -- that’s fun for us. We’ve handled inventory and cleaned up the workshops and stop manufacturing for a few weeks. That party sort of kicks off the start of our vacation time and… with the open bar, let’s just say that our little congregation in the corner can be highly entertaining.”

“Oh, I’m _sure_ ,” she deadpans, arching an eyebrow at him. “It’s probably why I steer clear of your crowd at that party every year.”

He shakes his head bemusedly at her but doesn’t rise to her bait, otherwise, and she’s the one who finds herself off-kilter when he reaches for her hand again, breath hitching involuntarily. “What do you say we start there?” he murmurs. “Have a drink or two and… start over? A fresh start and all that. It’s New Year’s, after all.”

She groans a little, levels him with a look. “If you spend the whole time spouting off horrible cliches, you may have ended this friendship before it’s even really begun, you know.”

“Right,” he drawls, “and who was it calling me Robin Hood earlier?” Her mouth falls agape, just a little, but any indignant protest gets caught halfway up her throat when he arches his own eyebrow in silent challenge, waiting. “It’s just a drink.”

“Funny,” she volleys back, “it sounds an awful lot like you asking for a second chance.”

“It’s what I do,” he reminds her, shrugging a bit, and he’s so disarmingly _charming_ about the whole thing that it’s kind of impossible to bring herself to do the sensible thing and say no.

“Alright,” she agrees with a heavy sigh. “One drink.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he enthuses, and god, there’s all that horribly insufferable sincerity she’s come to associate with Christmas Town, what has she even gotten herself into. “In the meantime, I’m going to head home for a kip, and you should probably get back before you turn into a, well.” His eyes shift to the side, beyond and behind her, and she’s not proud of the fact that she actually has to half-glance over her shoulder to catch onto his meaning.

Gently, Regina pulls her hand away from his and rolls her eyes, sighing long-sufferingly as she turns away from him to face her holiday door. “I am already regretting this.”


	4. February

**February**

Thus far, Regina Mills has proven to be a rather amiable companion. Robin had been a bit unsure of the idea, at first; they had, after all, gotten off on rather the wrong foot in the beginning. A relationship built upon an entirely antagonistic dynamic isn’t one he particularly fancies, though sometimes he wonders if having Will Scarlet as a companion qualifies as such. Still, he and Regina had… softened toward one another, he thinks, and the ease with which she had matched both his wit and jests had warmed him to the idea -- enough so that, once the metaphorical Christmas cat was out of the bag, so to speak, he’d been the one to propose the shift with a drink.

To date, he thinks that drink is one of his better ideas.

He’d been a bit nervous, to tell the truth, when the post New Year’s party had come round, and not even Will’s circus of a love life could properly distract Robin from the way anticipation fluttered anxiously in his chest. Will’s lamenting, however, did sort of make Robin wish he hadn’t opted to wait on drinks until Regina’s arrival because _lord_ , was Will Scarlet a tough pill to swallow when he was lovestruck and bemoaning his choices. When she _had_ finally arrived, she’d thoroughly sorted Will out in the space of about three minutes and matched Robin’s order for a whiskey with ease, lips curving with a smile.

She’d been _enchanting_.

Enough so that, after a few rather spirited rounds of _never have I ever_ and a fun bit of people-watching from the end of the bar, Robin had offered to walk her back to Halloween Town, his vision swimming with stars. She’d been surprisingly chatty the whole way, regaling him with the whirlwind of her friend Ruby’s antics in the romance department (distractions are commonplace in Holiday Land, it seems, among the more commitment-phobic of the population). But he had also, in turn, learned rather a lot about her in the space of a mere twenty minute walk: the fact that she’s been below the Surface for more than half a century, for starters, but also the ways in which she uses her work to comprehend and keep up with the progression of the world above; her favorite part of her holiday, outside of her venture into Dia de los Muertos (the Dragon’s Flight, which, admittedly, Robin can understand); that she never dresses up for her own holiday; that she feeds every stray cat in her neighborhood ( _and will deny it if anyone asks, Locksley, so don't even think about it_ ). She’d been practically beaming, fit to burst with conversation and camaraderie, eyes alight and cheeks flushed, smile more free than he’d ever seen it, and, well.

Frankly she was -- is, still, but on the night in question in particular -- _stunning_ , in every way, and if he’d been a touch more sober, Robin thinks he still would’ve struggled against his own attraction. As it was, he’d had maybe one whiskey too many to the point of lacking inhibition, and he’d found himself leaning in while she was mid-sentence before he could even so much as give it a half-thought.

Lucky for him, for the both of them, really, Regina had enough of her wits about her to press her fingertips against his lips as a gentle but firm _no_. She’d given him a reason, though she didn’t really need to, explained that she absolutely didn’t kiss over New Year’s because _there is nothing genuine about constructed moments, I don't care if it's technically New Year’s Day_. Robin, for his part, had managed to pull himself together and return her volley, teasing her about having a rule for _everything_ , and he hadn’t quite, in the end, cocked everything up, he thinks.

The last six weeks have done more than enough to prove that to him. She hadn’t gone frosty at all after his little… lack of judgement, had matched each one of his invitations with one of her own and roped him into a steady stream of messages to keep them both entertained during otherwise dull workdays. There have been days when it’s been a bit… jarring, considering how deliberately she’d been keeping him at arm’s length before, but the ways in which Regina has risen to the occasion have been _more_ than welcome. Oh, she’s still got enough of a wall up, true enough, reminds him of how far he has to go in “leveling up” nearly as often as she groans and chastises his, in her words, “terrible” jokes. But even with that, Robin thinks the line in the sand isn’t quite so solidly drawn, and his days have since become filled with her smile over coffee and drinks, her enthusiasm over dinners and her whisper in his ear during Surface films at the underground cinema in New Year’s Town.

It’s… easy, comfortable, and for a short six weeks, Robin can almost forget the twinge of yearning he’d felt on the first of the year (well, in the Gregorian calendar, anyway).

Almost.

And then the post Valentine’s party arrives, and the sight of Regina Mills lingering at the fringes of the crowd at the festival grounds, waiting (waiting for _him_ , he knows) strikes him like an arrow sunk deep in his chest.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly out of the ordinary about her tonight, to be perfectly honest. She’s done up to the same degree she has been at every post holiday party he’s seen her at -- a bit of flair here, a touch of rebellion there. Really, there should be nothing about her attire that should call for more attention than it normally would: not the way the fabric of her dress, black as night, clings close to every curve and hits mid-thigh; not the way the burgundy of her blazer makes her blend in here or the way it cuts her shoulders, her waist; not even the way those boots, _bless them_ , form long, clean lines and hit just shy of her knees. She’s not even really _doing_ much of anything he wouldn’t already expect of her, is just leaning against one of the trees, arms folded over her chest and thinly concealed judgement clear on her face.

But the thing about Regina Mills, it seems, is that all of her ordinary is such a cut above anyone else’s that it makes her really rather extraordinary, and all at once, Robin feels his heart beating at the very edges of his chest. Much as he values Regina’s companionship, there is a part of him that fills the gaping, bleeding hole in his chest with a yearning for something much, much more.

He is in very great danger, he thinks, of venturing back into the territory of wanting to be more than just friends.

(The breath catches in his lungs, at that, seizes cold and chilling as Marian flashes across his irises, thin and frail and warm and backlit by blue.

He is, to a point, _terrified_ of what this might mean.)

And then Regina glances over her shoulder, seeming to sense his eyes on her, and the smile she bestows upon seeing him thaws the more frigid parts around the edges of his heart, a gentle warming that brings breath back into his lungs and puts him back at ease. He leans into it, tries to put his trepidation from his mind and returns her smile with one of his own, descending farther into the fray.

Together, they weave their way through the crowds toward the open bar, ducking and bobbing under and around balloons and floral arrangements and lovers intertwined. Most of the party is in full swing at this point, barstools occupied and tip jars overflowing. It’ll probably take them a while to get so much as a single drink, Robin thinks, but Regina anchors a hand on his elbow and arches up to press her lips against his ear, asks too-loudly if he wants anything in particular. Robin shakes his head, switches positions and tries not to yell _whatever you’re having_ into her ear in reply. She’s gone without so much as another word, disappears into the throng congregating around the bar. Robin retreats back to the fringes of the crowd and forces himself not to ghost over the places her skin had touched his.

_Get it together, Locksley, bloody hell._

Less than five minutes pass before Regina emerges from the wall of people around the bar, a glass of red wine in each hand and an expression that conveys both her exasperation and her relief at making it out without incident. He accepts the second glass with a smile, echoes her murmured _cheers_ with his own and resolutely does not lose himself in the way the wine wets red against her lips. He takes a second sip, larger, longer, and tries to drown in the way it burns all the way down.

For the most part, they’re both quiet as they filter through the crowd, sipping wine and perusing the various sweets some of the festival vendors have to offer. He makes half-suggestions every once in awhile when they come across activities like carnival games or crafts, but she meets his half-interest with almost none of her own, wrinkling her nose in very obvious distaste.

“Alright,” he sighs after she’s turned her nose up at the fourth or fifth carnival-like attraction, “tell me something, Regina. Before you were friends with me, what exactly did you _do_ at these gatherings?”

Her jaw jumps a little in irritation at the question, but she’s far more patient with him now than she used to be. She takes a sip of wine, smacks her lips for good measure and doesn’t quite look him in the eye when she replies, rather flippantly, “I’m _doing_ what I normally do at these things. I make an appearance, I have a drink, I sample the food if there’s anything that catches my eye, and then after an hour I usually go home.” She pauses at that, turns a wicked smile on him and leans in conspiratorially. “Normally, I don’t have the pleasure of your company, so I may stay a little longer.” Another pause and she wrinkles her nose, a tell he’s learned is very much an indicator that the alcohol is getting to her, even if it’s only for the night (a perk of being immortal, he supposes -- no hangovers). “Actually, sometimes I get saddled with practically baby-sitting Ruby and making sure she doesn’t do anything she’ll regret for the next three months. Those nights are never all that fun.”

“And do you?” he presses, arching an eyebrow at her. “Have fun?”

Her mouth falls open a bit in obvious indignation, but she snaps it shut quickly, eyes narrowed as she tries to pull her wits together to return the serve. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means it’s a party, Regina,” he laughs, nudging her arm companionably with his own. “It means you’re supposed to have a good time, and instead you look like I’ve dragged you into the budget meeting from hell. I don’t understand -- you weren’t like this after Christmas, or New Year’s. What gives?”

The light in her eyes dims a bit, any trace of her smile faltering as she looks down and away, and his eyes fall to where her fingers clutch the stem of her wine glass, twirling it this way and that. “I told you at New Year’s,” she reminds him faintly. “I don’t like manufactured moments.”

“I hate to break it to you,” he drawls, trying to tease, “but if that’s the case, then you might be in the wrong business.”

She flicks her eyes up, tries to level him with an annoyed glare and fails, her expression lacking any real bite or heat. “New Year’s isn’t so bad,” she allows, twisting and twisting and twisting her glass. “I’m not a fan of the midnight kiss, and I think resolutions are pretty worthless because no one ever ends up keeping them, anyway. But this?” she says, glancing out at the warm, wine-soaked wonder that is the post Valentine’s Day festival. “This is… trying too hard. This is public displays of affection for the sake of being public about it.”

It’s his turn to narrow his eyes, trying to peel back the layers of her words to deduce her meaning. “You don’t think they’re genuine,” he guesses, gesturing toward the crowd of couples mingling throughout the festival grounds. “You think they’re putting on?”

“I didn’t say that,” she dismisses, half-scowling at her rapidly dwindling glass of wine. “I just think that people misconstrue the point of the holiday. They treat it like it’s important that other people see how happy you are under the guise of doing something special for themselves and their partners. And I mean, honestly, do you think any one of them puts this much effort into their relationship year-round?” she challenges, blinking up at him in a manner that looks surprisingly lucid for how hard the magically-aged wine seems to be hitting her.

“Probably not,” he allows.

“A night out is fine,” she says, shrugging a little as she glances back down into her nearly empty glass. “I just -- it’s --”

“-- a bit of a show,” he supplies, swallowing thickly as his earlier flash of melancholy settles in around the edges again, burning. “It’s not the way you show up for someone in the everyday,” he murmurs, low and burdened, and Marian is the ghost at the back of his throat trying to startle new breath into his lungs.

When Regina looks back up at him, though, there’s a new sort of warmth in her eyes, gentle and understanding and altogether curious, and if he weren’t so bloody terrified of pursuing this -- pursuing her -- he thinks he’d probably make a quip about leveling up. She studies him for half a moment before she nods almost imperceptibly in agreement, and Robin’s answering smile is half-hearted and tight around the edges at best, lost when he takes up her mantle and glances down into his own glass, instead. “Wow,” Regina huffs, “I really am the absolute life of the party tonight, aren’t I?”

His smile softens into something more genuine, amused, and Marian becomes a shadow that fades into the background, blocking his way back. “Evidently not,” he admits, “but, I think that means that it is my job, as your friend, to... let’s say, get you into the spirit of things?”

“You’re not getting me on the back of a giant swan,” she deadpans, sounding half-serious. “I don’t care how well-trained those things are. They are _vicious_ , and I have friends in high places, I know how many people fall into that river at this thing every year.”

He bites back a bemused chuckle and shakes his head, downing the rest of his wine in one go and setting his glass aside. “I promise I won’t subject you to interactions with not-so-wild animals. Now,” he sighs, holding out a hand in offering, “do you trust me?”

“Well isn’t _that_ a loaded question.”

“ _Regina_.”

Her eyes flick down to his proffered hand, considering it for a moment before she lifts her eyes to meet his again, eyes sparking with something akin to mischief. “What exactly does trusting you entail?”

Robin rolls his eyes pointedly but doesn’t withdraw his hand. “Keeping your New Year’s resolution -- don’t think I’ve forgotten that I managed to coerce you into making one, by the way -- and doing something new.”

There’s a flash of panic-induced regret in her eyes, but she masks it almost immediately and pointedly levels him with a glare. “You’re not doing a very good job of making the prospect sound more appealing, you know that?”

“And yet I am unmoved by such a plight,” he throws back, risking it and taking her hand in his. “Come on, then, let’s go see what the amorous people of Valentine’s Town have added to their repertoire this year.”

“Some friend,” she snorts, nearly spilling her magically-refilled (when did that happen?) wine as he drags her back down into the fray toward one of the information kiosks.

(It does not escape his notice that she doesn’t pull her hand away.)

Regina finishes off the rest of her (second, surprising) glass of wine and sets the glass aside while Robin peruses the postings, and by the time he’s carefully selected an event with a cheerfully declared _I’ve just the thing_ , there’s considerably more color in her cheeks and far less protest in her expression. Again, he takes her hand if only to prevent them from getting separated as they navigate their way through the crowds once more toward the back of the festival grounds.

When they finally arrive in the open stretch of meadow, he is thoroughly unsurprised at the way Regina arches both eyebrows at him like he’s grown a second head. “What is this?”

“I’d’ve thought it obvious,” he teases. “It’s an archery range.”

“I’m well aware of that, _thank you_ ,” she drawls pointedly. “I meant more why are we here?”

He nods toward the tree just behind her off to her right, indicating the flier nailed to the trunk. “They’re having a tournament in a bit here,” he explains as she briefly glances over her shoulder at the posting. “A competition of sorts.”

“And… what,” she muses, a laugh bubbling out of her as she turns back to face him, “you want us to enter?”

“No,” he dismisses, lips curving up into a smile. “I figured that wouldn’t really be your thing. But I thought,” he ventures, taking a couple of steps forward with a deliberately exaggerated swagger, “that perhaps we might have one of our own.”

She laughs again -- at him this time, he’s absolutely positive, but he doesn’t mind; it was the point, after all. “You want us to handle potentially dangerous weapons after we’ve been drinking?”

At that, he stops and levels a pointed look right at her. “Regina, we are _immortal_.”

“And you have a penchant for acting on inadvisable ideas when you’ve had a few,” she counters, but there’s no real intent behind it, no warning or temptation to lecture. She’s… teasing him, he realizes, about the near-kiss last month, and hope blossoms and brims in his chest as sick and cloyingly sweet as every artificial sweet they’d both passed over all night.

He really, truly has no idea when he got so far gone for her but he is a right _mess_ , the wine in his veins a delicious _pop-hiss-burn_ that will not quiet his mind or quell his aching, yearning heart.

He longs, for one wild moment, to be able to talk to Marian again, if only so she could talk some sense into him -- or at least tell him what to do.

(He thinks -- he knows what she’d tell him now.

He knows what direction she’d push him in.)

Robin draws new breath, and takes one more step forward. “One round,” he poses, glancing sidelong at where the official bows and arrows are propped up. “Winner gets a prize of their choosing.”

At that, a light sparks to life in Regina’s eyes, and there is absolutely no mistaking the glint of sheer deviousness when her lips curve into a very careful smile. Slowly, she takes a step toward him, and then another, effectively bridging the remaining gap between them, and with both hands on her hips, she glances up at him through long lashes, calculated to the last. “ _Anything_?”

Another breath, this one much longer and measured and a touch hesitant, but Robin matches her cheshire grin with his own and bites his lip, not wanting to give anything away. “Anything,” he agrees, doing his best to keep his voice level and even.

“Deal,” she agrees, prompt and prim, and without so much as a backwards glance, she brushes right past him to retrieve a bow and a set of arrows, tongue poking between her lips in determination.

He resolutely does not laugh at her.

It takes them both a few minutes to gain their bearings, Regina attempting to familiarize herself with the obviously very foreign equipment, but she’s a quick study, it seems, and once she’s landed a few practice shots at least _somewhere_ on one of the targets, she declares it’ll have to do. He lets her go first -- insists upon it, really -- and watches as she rolls her shoulders back and tries to relax, clearly feeling a little self-conscious about her inexperience and lack of form. It takes everything in him not to sidle up behind her and try to ease her into something a bit more natural, but the game would be over before it could even really begin, if he did. So Robin keeps his mouth shut and his feet firmly in place, and the only allowance he makes before the arrow leaves her bow is that he will move, in the end, if it comes to a matter of safety.

Her shot is nowhere near perfect, but it does land, on the target, somewhere in the vicinity of ring three, and her surprised yet equally self-delighted laugh is almost enough to make Robin back out. She’s proud of that, clearly, smug satisfaction clear on her face, and Robin is loathe to take it from her. And then she turns her smile on him, bright and bemused and entirely without restraint, and it’s like waking with the sun.

Almost ends up being just shy of enough.

Enough so that, when he’s poised and ready to release his own arrow, the sight of her rocking up on the balls of her feet in anticipation (well, he thinks, anyway, it’s hard to tell in those glorious, magnificent boots of hers) plays upon his sense of honor to the point of altering his aim.

Well, slightly, anyway.

And even though he doesn’t land the arrow dead center -- and on purpose, at that -- Regina’s resulting little scoff of indignance tells him that he hasn’t quite disguised his skill well enough. “You _cheated_.”

Slowly, Robin lowers his bow and twists a little to look at her dead on. “I _beg_ your pardon?”

“You cheated,” she says again, practically insisting as she moves closer. “You used magic.”

He barks out a laugh at that, he cannot help it; he hadn’t quite expected that accusation. “Upon my honor, I swear to you I didn’t.”

She slows to a stop in front of him, eyebrow ticking up as she works her jaw and considers him for a moment, clearly trying to figure out if he’s lying. “Okay,” she says finally, hands back at her hips as she squares her shoulders and gives him a quick once-over. “Prove it. Do an inhibitor shot.”

He only just barely bites back another laugh, manages (or tries, anyway) to school his expression into something a bit more neutral -- or as neutral as he should be, he supposes, considering they’re currently in competition. “Gladly,” he counters, “as long as you do one as well. It’d only be fair, after all, if leveling the playing field is what you’re after.”

“Deal,” she agrees, quick and clipped, and this time Robin doesn’t bother suppressing his amusement at the fact that he has managed to rope her into two such agreements with surprising ease. She blusters a bit at that, every bit the woman he’d met back in October, and Robin very much still takes delight in being able to get under her skin this way. “Wait here,” she says, firm and quick and still somehow a request, and without another word, Regina disappears in a puff of purple smoke.

She’s only gone for a few moments, enough time for Robin to stock the bows and arrows back where they belong and mend the targets to make them look like new for the tournament before he loses the ability to do magic for the next twelve hours. Eight years he’s been here and he’s still not entirely sure _why_ inhibitor shots are even a thing, though he figures the predicament they’ve found themselves in is probably one of many reasons why. There’s certainly a market for it, especially around the holidays, and without them, Robin supposes, eternity without some level of variation is probably dreadfully boring.

When Regina returns, she’s once again holding a glass in each hand, these much smaller -- quite veritable, literal shots of alcohol -- and the sight of the smoking blue liquid is enough to make Robin’s stomach churn. He’s only taken inhibitors a small handful of times -- most of those a result of some ill-advised tomfoolery with Will -- but each ingestion had left him feeling queasy and off-kilter and borderline insomniatic; to a point, mortal, but in the worst sorts of ways. Still, a deal is a deal, and while Robin _does_ have a sense of honor about these things, giving Regina peace of mind is the more important thing here. And, well.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to claiming his prize without it.

He opens his mouth, ready to propose a brief toast, but Regina’s knocking back the shot before he can so much as try to think of words to form, and he doesn’t even think she hears his muttered _alright then_ before he tosses back his own. He chokes, sputters a bit as it coils its way down his throat, and while Regina manages to keep her composure, he can tell it’s a near thing. The only sign she gives of her displeasure is a soft smacking of her lips and a slight twisting scowl before she’s pressing the empty glass into his hand and moving back toward the bows and arrows he’s just put away. In retrospect, he realizes that attempting to clean up may have been a bit, well, pointless, but it’s habit by now, he thinks, the obsessive need to cover his tracks ingrained in him after years of daring to dredge up and out of the snow.

Regina’s a better shot with a bit more liquor in her, though Robin can’t say he’s all that surprised. She’s clearly a bit more relaxed this time around as the inhibitor starts to take effect and the alcohol starts to sink in some more. He can see the clarity in her eyes even as they grow a bit unfocused, and it’s that, he thinks -- the mere fact that she’s not overthinking things, for a change -- which makes all the difference. Her form improves, if only marginally, and this time the arrow doesn’t curve quite so much in the air, landing in the ring just outside of the center. “I should take up archery,” she declares, sounding simultaneously surprised and sure of herself. “Or drunk archery, I guess. Is that a thing?”

“I’m sure it is,” Robin chuckles lightly, swapping places with her. “Somewhere up on the Surface, I’m sure some bigger idiot than you or I has put their mortality at risk by engaging in such an activity.”

“You _are_ an idiot,” she sighs happily, sinking down into a nearby chair and smiling fondly at him.

“Perhaps you’ve had enough to drink,” he muses, returning her smile with ease. “Enough liquor in you and you become curiously kind.”

“Just shut up and take your shot so I can claim my prize.”

“As you wish,” he sighs, and turns toward the target once more, pulling the string of his bow taut. A split second before he releases, he casts his gaze to her once more, and eyes on the prize, Robin releases his arrow with every intention to catch.

_Bullseye._

He’s looking to her long before she tears her eyes away from the target, clearly still reeling with the shock of her loss, and though she looks a bit sour, it’s honestly nothing compared to the ire she’d directed at him last October. “Just so you know,” she says pointedly, “you’ve become friends with a very sore loser.”

“Oh, not all that sore,” he reasons, setting the bow aside. “You’ve admitted to it at least.”

“Please, spare me the flattery,” she drawls, rolling her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Always straight to the point with you,” he sighs, crossing the meadow toward her.

“ _Robin_.”

He bites back a smile as he slows to a stop in front of her, unable to help looking down and away for a moment. He knows he probably looks bashful, coy, and he honestly wishes he didn’t; he’s sure it comes across as a bit… artificial, constructed ( _manufactured_ , the back of his mind supplies, sounding an awful lot like Regina). It’s the last thing he wants, honestly, even with the way he’d arranged their little bet in his favor. He wants -- christ, he wants this, wants _her_ , but he doesn’t want to force it. He just -- he wants to at least have the opportunity, to _try_.

He hasn’t wanted to try in a very, very long time.

Regina’s words haunt him like a whisper -- _over fifty years_ \-- and he wonders, burns very much to know why she’s broken half a century of consistency for _him_.

(Behind him, the shadow Marian casts upon the ground starts to disappear from view, and Robin steps forward into the light.)

“I would only ask,” he ventures, looking back up at her very carefully, “to claim the same prize the winner of the tournament receives.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“A kiss,” he says simply, corner of his mouth twitching with the temptation of a smile, “from a fair maiden.”

Were Regina sober, he believes very much that her mind would be racing a mile a minute trying to riddle him out. As it is, all she seems capable of is a reaction far more genuine than he could have hoped for: annoyance gives way to surprise in her expression, gentle around the edges. Her mouth drops open again, just slightly, but no words come forth.

For a moment, it seems, she is actually rendered speechless.

If he weren’t so fucking nervous, Robin actually thinks he’d be quite proud of that.

The sound of voices growing near startles them both out of their reverie, and it takes him a half minute longer than it should to realize that people are heading for the meadow to begin the tournament. He looks back to her too-quickly, stomach flipping a bit -- whether from the inhibitor shot or anxiety or both, he’s unsure -- as he watches her inhale slowly, shoulders tensing just a little. He doesn’t think either of them are particularly keen on continuing this area of conversation -- however it turns out -- in front of an audience, so it’s with very little inhibition left that Robin takes that last step forward and takes her hand in his yet again, pulling her attention back to him. “Perhaps we should take this conversation somewhere a bit more private,” he murmurs.

Her eyes meet his, fall to where their hands are joined, but her attention is pulled away again as the voices grow nearer still. She inhales sharply, imperceptibly almost, but she nods her agreement quietly and lets him pull her to her feet, surprisingly steady considering how much he thinks the alcohol’s impacted her thus far. Once more, they navigate their way through the woodland bustle of the festival grounds to try and find someplace a bit more quiet, isolated to talk, but somewhere along the way he thinks they must get turned around because they end up retreating farther into Valentine’s Town, the din of the party growing more dim as the trees become more densely populated, roots upturning their path.

Finally, though, they stumble across an old and battered wooden door, the wrought iron handle and lock rusted and worn to the point of being useless. He reaches for it without second thought, pushes the door open and guides her through it in the hopes that they’ve come across some sort of sanctuary at last. What they find when the door rattles shut behind them is a garden encompassing a glen, untended and wild and dying without care. The sun has long since set, but there’s a small patch of grass in the center of the glen that bears its mark. For now, the moon takes its place, half-shadowed and barely peeking through the canopy overhead, and they’re left with little else other than a lamppost on either end of the garden-glen and a small company of fireflies to cut the dark.

They’re alone again, properly this time, but Robin finds his attention entirely diverted by the place they’ve stumbled upon, curiosity piqued as he glances around the forgotten garden tucked away in the corner of the town. “Where are we?”

“Saint Valentine’s haven,” Regina murmurs, hand going slack in his.

“Pardon?” he asks, brow wrinkling a little as he turns to look at her properly again.

“Saint Valentine’s haven,” she repeats, relinquishing his hand at last as she nods toward a plaque erected nearby. Intrigued, Robin follows her lead and comes up alongside her in order to get a better look and a proper read of the text engraved upon it. She’s a faster read than he is though, regardless of her head start, and she’s providing him with the answers he seeks before he has a chance to discover them on his own. “The founders of Valentine’s Town created the garden to honor the myth surrounding Saint Valentine officiating illegal weddings under Roman law.” A pause, and then, “Do you think that’s true -- that he actually did it?”

“I’ve no idea,” Robin admits, reaching out to thumb over the raised letters. “The sentiment’s nice, though, even if most people seem to have abandoned embracing it.”

“Yes,” she echoes faintly, her hand hovering over the plaque near his but not touching. “A shame, really. Even if it’s only a legend, it’s certainly preferable to the dog and pony show the holiday’s become.”

Something in his chest softens and warms at the admission, and he feels it blossom all the way up to his smile when he looks over at her again and takes her in: the way the light of the lamppost highlights the line of her jaw; the way she reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear; the spark of sincerity in her eyes and the gentle cadence of her breathing. There’s something altogether more easy about her air, unburdened and lacking any sign of her earlier nerves, and Robin’s words find their way into the spaces her light creates for him. “A much better way, perhaps,” he muses, “to show up.” She stills at that, hand just shy of touching his, but the smile she turns on him is all sun again, pleased and approving and a little sleepy around the edges.

And then her eyes flick down just _so_ , and Robin’s heart stutters in his chest.

He could not have manufactured this moment more if he tried any harder than he already has, and no matter how deep the yearning stretches down into every vein and nerve, he cannot take what he wants most -- not like this. She’s already given him so much, including the thing he’d lost and has long since thought he’d never reclaim.

For the first time in _years_ , Robin has hope.

(For what, exactly, he’s reluctant to put words to, but Marian keeps them safe until he’s ready for them, tucked in petals withered and wilted on the ground.)

For now, the words Robin owns are reluctant and painful and an absolute must. “I should… go,” he fumbles out, withdrawing his hand too-abruptly and flexing his fingers to keep from fidgeting anxiously (which _is_ anxious fidgeting in and of itself, he’s a fucking idiot, honestly).

Her hand falls down and away from the plaque, confusion clear on her face. “Now?” she presses. “After all the trouble we went through to get away from the crowds?” She hesitates, just for half a beat as she worries her lip between her teeth, before she drops her voice a little and adds, “You haven’t even claimed your prize.”

The words should be _music_ to his ears, frankly, but they hit him in the lungs down low, shaking out the smoke that’s settled from the shot he’d taken earlier and choking air up out of his throat. “You, um, you didn’t agree to it,” he manages, coughing a bit and trying very, very hard to fight against the rise of heat to his cheeks.

“I’ve hardly had the chance,” she argues, leaning against the tree nearest to her and folding her arms over her chest. “And… you _did_ win our little wager back there, fair and square.”

At that, Robin closes his eyes and huffs out a half-laugh, tension bleeding from his muscles as he runs a hand through his hair and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. He has gone and cocked this up finally, good and proper and he honestly has no idea what the _fuck_ he was on about earlier in convincing himself that taking this sort of risk was the right path to take. “Yes, um, well -- about that,” he ventures, knowing that he is _painfully_ poor at disguising how profoundly awkward he feels about the whole thing at the moment.

For her part, Regina, bless her, doesn’t let the silence linger too long. “You _did_ cheat.”

He blinks up at her at that, the accusation still landing with him poorly, but the truth here, he thinks, may go a long way in clearing the air a bit. “I… pressed my advantage,” he admits, dropping his hand down to awkwardly anchor his hands at his hips. He settles there for barely half a moment before thinking better of the stance, rolls his shoulders back and shifts awkwardly to tuck his hands in his back pockets instead. “I may have had some archery lessons on the Surface, before.” A beat to allow himself the quirk of a guilty smile, and then, “I knew I wasn’t likely to lose.”

Her face is impassive for the most part, near impossible to read, but she doesn’t seem… angry with him, at the very least. “Why come clean, then?”

He takes a breath to steady himself, smile breaking down a bit, and it takes everything in him not to take a step toward her again, to reach out and comfort and reassure. “Don’t get me wrong, Regina -- I like you, immensely. I’m _more_ than grateful that you indulged my silly little request back on Christmas Eve because, I mean, Will Scarlet is a solid mate to have around for an eternity -- loyal almost to a fault, that man is -- but it’s… different. He’s… rougher around the edges, even moreso than you were in the beginning, if you can believe that. He can be difficult to really _talk_ to, sometimes, but you? You’re…”

“I’m?” she prompts, and christ, he really has no idea how she managed to develop the patience to put up with him, he’s such a godforsaken mess about all of this at the moment.

“You’re… sharp,” he says, barreling onward when he sees the way her expression shifts into something a bit more skeptical. “You are sharp and you’re clever, you care far more than most people do down here about a job well done. You have a stupid rule about _everything_ and you’re completely uncompromising on your morals to the point of being almost belligerent about it at times. You look after those no one cares to so much as notice or consider worthwhile and feed the fucking stray cats in your neighborhood and _see_ people as they are, even if it takes you a bit to get there. You saw -- you saw _me_ ,” he murmurs, faltering a bit as his mind plays catch-up with his heart and tries to sew his mouth _shut_. "You teased me, back in December, about asking you for a second chance, but you were the one who _gave it_ , Regina -- freely and willingly.

“The point I am trying to make here, rather inarticulately,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes for a half-second to try and salvage this botched confessional, “is that I like _you_ , very much, and as… _tempted_ as I am to come collect, there are things I’m not willing to risk losing as a result of doing so. It wouldn’t feel right, to steal a kiss -- especially one I didn’t properly earn,” he insists, all of the air leaving him in one go.

Her eye squint a bit, brow furrowed just slightly as she wets her lips and purses them a little, and all at once Robin very much recognizes that look for what it is, has seen her give it to him close to a hundred times in recent weeks. “You know,” she muses, slow and hesitant and very much trying to conceal the hint of amusement in her voice, “this is probably the most _shoot-yourself-in-the-foot_ version of leveling the playing field I’ve witnessed in a long time.”

“ _God_ ,” he groans, chuckling self-deprecatingly as he scrubs a hand over his face. “Alright, well, lest I shove that wounded foot farther into my mouth, I’m going to take my entirely ungraceful exit and spend the next few days picking up the scraps of my dignity, after which, I will call you and we can pretend we completely blacked out after those inhibitor shots. Does that sound like a solid plan or have I cocked this up beyond all manner of repair because --”

“Okay, this might be the alcohol and inhibitor talking,” she interjects, bridging the gap between them by gripping his forearms to ground him a bit, “but as someone with forty plus years on you when you factor in all of the immortality, can I offer up a bit of wisdom from the wise, Mister Archery Master?”

“Please,” he huffs, half-laughing as he leans into the way she’s trying to anchor him, rooting himself to the spot with ease.

And then her grip on his arms slackens, just a little, just enough that he’s suddenly hyper-aware of her touch, the way her skin is gentle and warm against his, and all at once he is anchored and aimless and adrift, too lost in the way the light plays and catches against her irises and the ease he feels at seeing the way her lips curve up into a smile. She draws in a breath as if to speak, seems to get lost halfway there and drops her gaze for a moment, fingertips dancing down to run featherlight across the back of his hand. “You can’t steal something that’s been given to you,” she murmurs, and when she lifts her gaze to meet his once more, there is absolutely no mistaking the intent in her eyes.

The last vestiges of his fear dig down deep, prey upon gray days and try to twist his panic into something far kinder than it really is. She means too much, already, too soon, he has already done her a disservice and the words are tumbling forth of their own volition, a last-ditch effort to keep him in the dark. “I, um -- it wouldn’t be… honorable,” he manages to stammer out, barely above a murmur himself, “to use the --"

“ _Robin_ ,” she says pointedly, and she’s not quite laughing but it’s a near thing, he can tell, “don’t get in your own way.”

Any reply he may have had, driven by fear or desire or otherwise, is lost as Regina leans in and brushes her lips against his. Her hands hover over his skin, just for a second, before skimming in and down, curling around his waist instead, but it’s not until she’s actually pressed against him ever so lightly that Robin finally _lets go_ , and leans into the light. 

And of the many _admirable_ qualities Regina Mills possess, Robin is also pleased to find (finally) that being a good kisser is one of them.


	5. March

**March**

Easter falls in April this year, so when March rolls around, it’s a month without a post holiday party -- which, for Regina, feels very much like a bit of a reprieve. She doesn’t feel like she’s had much of an opportunity to decompress since, well, September, probably, at least properly, anyway. November is always deceptively busy for those in Halloween Town; even without her little ventures into supervising souls for Dia de los Muertos, as project coordinator Regina spends a good chunk of November dealing with cleanup and safety violations and surveys and review reports alike. December _should_ be relatively relaxing for her, all things considered, but, well, she’s never been one much for December, not since…

Since _before_.

Since long, long before, when she wasn’t entirely alone on the Surface.

But she’s been alone for a long, long time now -- well over sixty years at this point -- and December for Regina has been as much about holing up in near-hibernation to pay her respects -- to reflect and to grieve -- as it has been to recharge her batteries. December is meant for Daniel, and for Daddy, and every year without fail, Regina directs every second of her ironic immortality to them -- to dressing down in warm sweaters and seeking the sharp, stinging snap of cold against her skin and treating the temporary view of the surface like gazing up at the stars, to a heaven above and beyond from a place not quite hell below.

This year -- last year, technically, since they abide by the Gregorian calendar down here like _most_ (not all) of the Surface does -- however, her winter watch had been cut short in the waning hours of Christmas Eve. Last year, last Christmas, there had been Robin, and Regina had suddenly found the dwindling days of December filled with the smell of pine and the taste of gingerbread and the crooked smile of an, well, an _outlaw_ , technically. And suddenly the subsequent post holiday parties that followed her previously second most hated holiday became more than cocktails and couture. Instead, she’d found herself engaged in games of teasing (she _will_ get him to see reason about that horrible, horrible sweater someday, she _swears_ ), in discoveries disguised as drinks and in the sun all packaged up in a fine man far, far too kind for his own good.

(The accent hasn’t hurt, either.)

December had turned over into January -- to drinks and dinners and dramas -- which in turn had all tumbled into February like the last snowstorm of a winter, flurrying and frosty and fracturing as the ice between them hadn’t just thawed, but broken open. And then the post Valentine’s party had happened, and, well.

Strictly speaking, Regina doesn’t actually have a, in Robin’s words, “stupid rule” about not kissing around Valentine’s Day -- even on the fifteenth.

She’s never _needed_ one, honestly. Okay, she’s never really needed one for New Year’s, either -- at least not down here -- but that had been a rule she’d carried with her from her time on the Surface. Liaisons on the Surface -- before her recruitment, after Daniel -- had been strictly that. And while Regina has had very good reason for not forming attachments down here outside of Ruby (and Belle, technically, but both relationships are professional and platonic), she also hasn’t had much opportunity in the half-century plus she’s been in Holiday Land.

(If opportunity _had_ ever knocked, Regina would have kept the door firmly shut.)

In all honesty, Robin Locksley’s little whirlwind of an arrival in her life has been… a breath of fresh air, one she’s since admitted was much needed after a rather stale and unvaried stint of several decades on her own. In spite of their frosty first meeting, Regina’s found that she really, really rather likes him. Oh, he’s still the unfortunate master of terrible puns, and all that cloying Christmas cheer and charity can be a bit much for her taste at times, and he can be _annoyingly_ argumentative just for the sake of needling her, but he’s… grown on her. He’s putting all that charity and disarming charm to good use, at least, and the lawless little way he’s chosen to go about it is all sorts of the right kind of wrong that might turn her on in ways she doesn’t entirely understand just yet. And… he makes her smile, bright and unabashed and without so much as a second thought, and Regina’s found that’s very much a feeling she’s really, really missed.

(For all her immortality, there are pieces of her smile that have long since been buried in the fractures of her soul, and Robin has somehow managed to dig up each last one and use them as tourniquets to stem the bleeding.)

By November, she’d certainly thawed a bit -- _admirable_ still sticks with her on her worst days -- and December had cracked open the door, but it had been January, in the end, that had opened it all the way. She’d blown into the post New Year’s party with all the force of a hurricane, purposefully presenting herself as a challenge, and all Robin Locksley had done was lean into her like a desert looking to drown.

So when she’d plucked up (and swallowed down) the (liquid) courage to be the one to kiss him first, properly and decidedly not on a day surrounding New Year’s, she hadn’t even really surprised herself. She thinks she’d surprised _him_ , though, in the end, and that too brings an admittedly rather _stupid_ smile to her face.

But it’s also… a _lot_ , jarring for her after decades upon decades without anything even close to resembling the… whatever has been building between them. And even though they keep up a steady stream of conversations most days through messages and e-mails and texts -- even though they still _see_ each other semi-regularly outside of the post holiday parties like they had all of January and the first couple of weeks of February -- by the time March turns new ground, Regina is honestly looking for a little bit of a breather. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be around him, engage with him -- she _does_ \-- but she also needs a little time to take a step back and try and wrap her head around all the ways in which those interactions are starting to change.

It’s not just the way their messages take a shift in tone: _come save me from this horribly high stack of paperwork_ has a decidedly different ring to it than _I’ve gotten fuck-all done at work today, keep thinking about your lips on my neck last night_. It’s not even the way they’re both a little freer with their touch now that they’ve passed into that territory, though, admittedly, Regina finds it a little difficult to think at _all_ when he touches her now -- sucks in a breath at the way his mouth sucks warm and wet at her neck; shivers at the way he dances his fingertips along her arm, across the back of her neck; leans into the way he cradles her head in his hands and curls his fingers into her hair when he pulls her in for a kiss, drinking her in. It’s that _all_ of that, every little excursion they go on now -- drinks and dinner and dramas -- are all up for consideration in the “dates” department, and they have decidedly _not_ had any version of that conversation in the least.

She has no idea what they’re meant to be to one another.

So March arrives, and at that point Regina is distracted enough that she’s honestly a little caught off guard by the glaring letter in her mail reminding her that her rules and regulations license is up for renewal this year, which means her month of March is going to be inconveniently interjected with a seminar she neither wants to attend nor has the focus for given how much is on her mind. But by law, she _has_ to -- it’s been ten years since her last renewal -- and Regina resigns herself to an entire day of distractions and disappointment with a heavy sigh.

The morning of the seminar, she slips into one of her nicer dresses (the houndstooth, professional and pretty and comfortable enough to keep her cozy in that too-cool conference room in the Oversight offices), slips an extra binder and notebook into her satchel, and stops off in Valentine’s Town for an indulgent upgrade to her usual morning coffee as a little pick-me-up. She’ll pay for the extra sugar by mid-afternoon, she’s sure, but by then most people at the seminar who aren’t new hires are usually pretty checked out of the lectures anyway, so she’s not all that concerned.

It’s the extra sweet latte she’s sipping on as she picks up her packet and peruses the table along the west wall for a lanyard with her nametag tucked in the plastic pocket when a voice to her right startles her into looking up. “Renewal or supervising a new hire?”

She’s smiling before Robin’s even finished talking, the reaction immediate and instinctual, but she honestly cannot bring herself to care about her spiral into school girl tendencies when the warmth that blossoms in her chest feels this _good_. It’s a stark contrast to the frigid cold she’d actively sought, back in December, but she welcomes it all the same, leans into the way her skin shivers and simmers back to life. “Renewal,” she replies easily, smiling into her cup. “You?”

“Alas, I am required to be here annually,” Robin sighs dramatically, turning his attention briefly to the table in front of them to join her in her perusal for his own nametag. “When you handle Santa’s Lists nearly every day, they seem to think it incredibly important to remind you regularly of the free will of humanity and, er, _interference_ , as it were.”

Regina barely bites back a bemused smile and shifts her gaze back to the table full of lanyards and nametags; she knows better than to be explicit about her dear old _Robin Hood_ ’s illicit activities when they’re in public. “Of course,” she agrees amiably, trying very hard not to laugh. “Stands to reason.”

He finds their lanyards first, _R. Locksley (Christmas Town)_ and _R. Mills (Halloween Town)_ side by side somewhere close to the center of the table. She starts to reach out to take it from him, shaking her head slightly at the way he’s biting his lip in clear self-satisfaction, but he doesn’t offer it up to her. Instead, he carelessly loops his own around his neck and arranges her lanyard carefully, gesturing slightly to get her to bow her head enough for him to put it on her. Frankly, it’s a little ridiculous, chivalrous and gallant and a bit too much of a show for her on the PDA front -- they’re still technically _working_ , after all -- but again, it’s… hard to work herself up to her usual ire these days. There isn’t much reason to be properly irritated or upset with him these days, and while Regina knows that the voyeur into physical affection certainly plays into that, she thinks it has far, far more to do with his fumbled confession last month than anything else.

In Robin’s eyes, Regina feels like royalty, respected and revered in ways she’d long ago given up hope of ever being bestowed upon again.

She sighs long-sufferingly but leans forward a little as requested, and the way his fingers linger against her skin as he adjusts it slightly for her makes her heart pick up pace. As she glances back up at him, her eyes follow the long, lean line of his tie up to his collar, and she doesn’t miss the way his Adam’s apple bobbles in his throat.

It’s a wonder they’ve been getting any work done at all, _honestly_.

They shift into making idle chatter after that, each of them clearly trying to force focus of their own, but they make their way to a pair of chairs in the last row at the very back of the conference room and situate themselves side by side without so much as a brief discussion about it. They’re like fucking _magnets_ , she swears, incapable of anything other than engaging in orbit when they venture into one another’s atmosphere. They’re already mostly settled in -- binders and packets and notepads pulled out and spread out upon the table in front of them -- by the time Regina realizes that sitting together for the entire duration of the seminar might be a bad idea, at least in terms of proper productivity, anyway.

For his part, Robin is actually surprisingly focused once the opening speaker begins, quiet and seemingly attentive on her left. He takes his work seriously, she knows that, admires him for it, but she also sort of figured that he wouldn’t be all that interested by the lectures and law reviews over the duration of the seminar. He’s here _every_ year, and rules and regulations and laws and limitations change so rarely and not at all drastically over the years that Regina can only imagine he’s got at least _parts_ of all of this memorized, even if he’s only been down here eight years. But he’s come with the same supplies as everyone else, and Regina wonders, then, if maybe he still takes this whole thing seriously if only so he knows exactly how to avoid and curtail the restrictions placed upon them.

In contrast, Regina finds that she’s having rather a lot of trouble focusing this year. She’s kept detailed and well-organized notes from the seminars over the years and brings them with her every time she’s up for a renewal so she can update them. The longer she’s been down here, though, the more she’s realized that very little ever changes, the less she feels she needs to pay strict attention to every last word. Her routine for the last couple of seminars has been to follow along with the lectures by idly flipping the pages of her own notes and keeping an ear out for any mild amendments she may need to make.

This year, though, today, Regina is driven to distraction to the point where for the entire first hour of the seminar, she loses track of where she is in her notes and has to scramble to play catch up, flipping through pages as quietly as possible to find her place again. It’s no fault of the speakers or organizers -- this is all a requirement, after all -- but it doesn’t matter, in the end, how interesting or droll the information being presented might be. Nearly _all_ of Regina’s focus is on Robin to her left: the way his cologne amplifies his usual aroma of pine; the ease with which he’s relaxed against the back of his chair; the gentle cadence of his breathing; the way his tongue darts out every five minutes or so to wet his lips; the nearness of his fingers to her shoulder even though he’s not trying to touch; the burning heat of his thigh pressed against hers; _that fucking tie_.

She can’t really think about anything else other than yanking him to her with that tie and enveloping his mouth with hers.

She’s so split in her focus -- trying very hard to _stay_ focused and failing miserably, jarring herself back to the person at the podium too many times to count -- that when Robin _does_ finally break his own focus and lean in, she very nearly starts in her seat. “You can’t possibly tell me they’re telling you anything you don’t already know,” he murmurs, lips ghosting over her ear.

The corner of her mouth quirks up into a smile, but she doesn’t give him the satisfaction of turning to meet his eyes. “This isn’t exactly my first seminar.”

“Mine either,” he reminds her needlessly, shifting in a little closer so he can drape an arm over the back of her chair. “You and I both know we’re not going to learn anything new or worthwhile today.”

“What’s your point?” she mutters, careful to keep her voice quiet so she doesn’t draw attention to them.

“My point,” he drawls, his voice far, far too low to be considered appropriate at a time like this, “is that I’m sure we can find far better things to do with our time today. It’s not as if we need to be here.”

“Clearly,” she remarks, unable to help arching an eyebrow as she finally deigns to turn and look at him, “since you seem to internalize all of those laws regarding non-interference so well.”

His jaw jumps a little at that, but any trace of paranoia is absent from his expression as he does that _stupid_ thing where he bites his lip when he’s gearing up for a teasing debate that’s sure to get under her skin. God, that’s really not helping the whole wanting to kiss him thing. “You know,” he muses, leaning in a little closer (too close, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ), “what _you_ do could technically be considered interference as well.”

“I supervise the souls of the dead, I don’t interfere with the living,” she counters, quick and easy and determinedly not pulling away like she probably should. “It’s not interference -- trust me, I know, I checked. I’ve been doing this a _long_ time.”

“All the more reason to skive off then, don’t you think?” he reasons. "Obviously, there isn’t much of a lesson to be learned here, for either of us.” She inhales sharply and levels him with a very pointed _look_ to try and rein him in a little, but Robin remains thoroughly unphased. “We’ve already signed in for the day,” he points out. “That’s all they need to keep track of us. And I assure you, no one is going to notice if we slip out.”

Regina narrows her eyes a little at that, disbelieving, but even as she turns her attention back to the room of attendees all sitting in front of them, she knows in her gut that Robin is right. Everyone else is either diligently taking notes or doing what she would normally do, were she actually alone, and the speaker is both too self-absorbed and far enough away that she’s reasonably sure no one _would_ notice if they ducked out the back door. And the idea of essentially playing hooky for the day is, admittedly, tempting, but her desire goes from zero to sixty in the space of less than a minute when she dials back into what the speaker is saying and realizes that she is actually _mouthing along with the words_.

She turns slightly to meet Robin’s eyes again, holds out a little bit longer against his raised eyebrows and expectant expression, but the second her gaze drifts down to his lips, Regina realizes that ditching may actually be a good idea, after all. At the very least, they’ll get to scratch at least a little bit of an itch.

At most, she thinks they might get around to finally having that conversation they’ve been steadfastly avoiding.

“Quietly,” she says finally, glancing pointedly at their strewn about binders and packets and notebooks. “I’d rather not run the risk of an infraction or some higher up’s ire, if that’s alright with you.”

“Deal,” he agrees amiably, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“You know,” she mutters, carefully collecting her supplies and removing her lanyard before depositing them into her satchel one at a time, “I’m seriously beginning to question how you manage to keep convincing me into not only enabling your ill-advised ideas, but to actually actively participate in them.”

“Must be all that cunning cleverness I’ve developed as a criminal,” he deadpans, shooting a quick smile in her direction as he packs up his bag and loops off his lanyard.

“Okay, _thief_ ,” she chuckles lightly, enjoying the way his nose wrinkles in half-annoyance at the Robin Hood reference, “let’s get out of here already.”

As Robin predicted, they manage to quietly make their way out of the conference room into the third floor lobby without turning so much as one head, and as Regina predicted, he looks entirely too pleased with himself at being proven right. The lobby is empty when they emerge into it, so Regina looks to Robin for guidance. “So what now?” she sighs, adjusting the strap of her satchel. “The way you talked about it in there, it seemed like this was a thing you did at least semi-regularly. I figure you have some sort of grand plan for -- how’d you put it? -- finding better things to do with our time today.”

He smiles a little sheepishly at her and shrugs. “Not particularly,” he admits. “Honestly, I just wasn’t sure I could stand sitting in there all day with you next to me. _Not_ like that,” he adds quickly, chuckling at her arched eyebrow. “I just meant,” he says, dropping his voice a little and stepping a little closer, “that it was kind of _wildly_ distracting sitting next to you and not being able to touch you. Another hour and I may have caused a bit of a scene.”

“That wouldn’t do,” she hums back, teasing. “You’re Mister Cloak-and-Dagger, after all.”

“You are never going to not make fun of me for that, are you?” he sighs dramatically, fingertips reaching out to trace up along her arms.

She levels him with a _look_. “You were wearing a _mask_.”

“Well,” he laughs lightly, hands dipping down and in to settle gently at her waist, “ _one_ of us should be partial to masquerades, Regina, and if _you’re_ not going to do it, I may as well. I apparently have some sort of legend to live up to or something.”

“Really?” she drawls, hedging for a few seconds before stepping into embrace. “Who told you that?”

“You know, I haven’t the foggiest clue,” he muses, eyes sparking as he moves a hand up to curl around to the back of her neck. “I might need a little help jogging my memory.” Regina shakes her head at him, only mildly exasperated, but she takes advantage of the fact that they are, for the moment, blessedly alone, leans in and arches up to grant his request and scratch the itch she’s had for well over an hour now. And by most all standards, really, the kiss they share is reasonably chaste, but there’s something about all of the little alterations -- the way his hand tightens ever so slightly at her waist; the way she presses her palms flat against his chest to steady herself; the way his thumb sweeps along her jaw; the way her toes positively _curl_ in her heels -- that makes it so much _more_ to the point where she’s pretty sure her cheeks have tinged pink by the time the break apart.

And then Robin smiles at her, warm and a little thunderstruck, says, “Ah, there she is,” and Regina thinks she is well and truly _fucked_.

She’s honestly a little grateful for the door that opens and shuts down the hall around the corner if only because it forces them apart and gives her a minute to _get it together, Mills, honestly_. She tucks her hair behind her ear, looks down and away and waits until the footsteps of the intruder come close and pass by, echoing rhythmically on the steps as they head downstairs. And it’s _silly_ , really; it’s not as if there are any rules against inter-holiday fraternization. Will Scarlet is plenty proof of that, if his mooning over the darling of Valentine’s Town at New Year’s was anything to go by. It’s just not quite as commonplace as intra-holiday relationships, particularly between Halloween and Christmas Towns. And honestly, none of that is really much of a factor where Regina’s aversion to public displays of affection are concerned. Relationships of any sort are a deeply personal and private thing, in her opinion, and she’s not all that inclined to even make the mildest of allowances without really knowing exactly _what_ they are.

It’s not a question she’s had to consider for a very long time, and if Robin’s agreement with her alignment last month is any indication, she thinks the same might hold true for him as well.

“We should probably make ourselves scarce,” Robin murmurs once the person is out of earshot.

Regina takes a measured breath to pull together her composure and quirks a playful smile up at him. “Look at that,” she teases, moving to brush past him, “you _are_ capable of sensible ideas every once in awhile.” She hears him chuckle lightly behind her but he doesn’t offer up more of a response than that, his footsteps echoing behind hers obediently at he follows her downstairs to the second floor. They’re halfway across the lobby toward the next set of stairs down when she slows to a stop in front of a familiar set of ornate doors, lip worried between her teeth as she considers an idea.

“Regina?” She blinks over at him; he’s passed her up, hand hovering over the railing of the stairs as he waits for her to rejoin him in their descent. “Are you coming?”

Her eyes flick between him and the doors once more before her lips twist into a half-smile. “Actually,” she says, “I… have an idea.” A beat, and she turns her gaze back to him once more, arching her eyebrows in silent expectation. “Do you trust me?”

His smile mirrors hers, twists and breaks open as he fails as suppressing his amusement. “I don’t know,” he muses, feigning concern even as he rounds the railing and starts to cross the lobby back in her direction. “What exactly does trusting you entail?”

“Not much,” she says, “just you entertaining the possibility that I won’t, in fact, always tease you for some of your better parts.”

It works: his eyes narrow, just a little, and she knows his curiosity is caught, his interest piqued. His smile doesn’t falter though, not in the slightest, and even when he’s being kept in the dark he shines, beaming and bright and reaching for her with every ray of light. “Alright,” he agrees as he slows to a stop in front of her, giving her a once over, “lead the way.”

With Robin at her heels, Regina pushes open the double doors to the Oversight library.

She offers Belle a friendly wave as they pass by the circulation desk and resolutely does _not_ give Belle’s raised eyebrow the indulgence of any sort of response at all, verbal or otherwise. Regina keeps her focus forward and makes a beeline for the back of the library, weaving her way through the maze of aisles toward the corner she’d discovered on her last visit here a couple of weeks ago.

Decades of the same monotonous series of events with very minimal and agonizingly slow variations and progress combined with a general lack of much of a social life (Ruby’s words, not hers, no matter how admittedly true they might be) have led Regina to exploring and expanding her mind in an effort to engage her intellect -- to learn and to grow. Part of that she credits to Daddy: he had, after all, pushed her toward a degree when it wasn’t common or well looked upon for women in either of his cultures or society at large. Regina had sought to build upon that foundation long after he’d passed, and over the years, the Oversight library has afforded her the opportunity to carry that tradition below the Surface. It’s also how she’d ended up befriending Belle, years back, and the bond has probably made Ruby more happy than anyone else if only so she doesn’t have to constantly lament being Regina’s lone friend.

Recently, though, Regina has been digging into darker, deeper, dustier parts of the library’s catalog, and her exploration had led, not long ago, to a discovery altogether delightful. It’s here, at her most recent excavation site, that Regina brings Robin now -- to a tiny, tucked away little corner with not much light and not a single other visitor in recent history. She deposits her satchel on the table at the end of the aisle and makes her way down to the back wall, trusting Robin to follow suit. She relocates the book she’d found without the need for a reference card as it’s still the only book on the shelf not covered in at least some level of dust. She pulls it from the shelf with ease and turns back around just as Robin catches up to her, his curiosity tinged with traces of confusion as his eyes dart between her and the book in her hand. “What’s this?”

“Consider it research,” she suggests, unable to fight the smile playing at the corners of her lips. She holds the book out it offering, softens a little at the gentle way he takes it from her and weighs it in hand, thumb tracing over the letters of _Robin Hood: Myth and Legend_ , his expression shifting into something more unreadable. “It’s a collection,” she explains, probably a little needlessly. “Every legend is cobbled together with truths and embellishments, but I thought that you might find these a little more geared toward your interests. And… ill-advised or not, the stories in there could certainly suffice as ideas you could employ to help you keep your New Year’s resolution.”

He looks up at her at that, eyes narrowing just a fraction to convey a new flare of confusion. “You loathe resolutions.”

“I do,” she admits, warm and bemused as she leans back against the shelf and offers him a smile. “But you helped me keep mine even when I wasn’t really invested, so I figured the least I could do was return the favor. And besides,” she adds, “what kind of _friend_ am I if I don’t live up to my role as your accomplice and help you find inspiration for improving upon your little covert Christmas operation?”

For a moment, Robin simply _stares_ at her, his expression equal parts bewilderment and disbelief as he registers her ridiculous little gesture. It’s a bit disarming, honestly, has her smile faltering as she shifts uncomfortably against the shelf and squints her eyes a little as she tries to figure out exactly what he might be thinking. But it’s only a moment, and then he’s setting the book aside with all the gentle reverence in the world, his eyes lingering on it a few seconds longer before his lips curve up, up, up into a blossoming smile.

That’s all the warning she gets before he’s overwhelming her, hands cupping, gripping her face a little roughly as he kisses her soundly. She can’t even quite get out the slight noise of surprise she wants to make, can only inhale sharply and reach for him, clinging for purchase as he breaks and takes another, wet and warm and another, another, another. “I am _so_ ,” he gasps, punctuating each whispered breath with a biting, dragging kiss, “ _fucking_ ,” another kiss, a staccato of threes, “ _besotted_ with you.”

She grins into the next kiss he steals, bubbles up a breathy laugh just before his tongue slips into her mouth and drags a muffled moan out of her. She brings up a hand to rest along his cheek, scratches her nails lightly against his scruff to try and temper his kisses long enough to try and orient herself a bit, but it just spurs him on, has him moaning in equal reply. He crowds in close, presses her impossibly closer against the shelves and sinks his fingers into her hair, kissing and kissing and kissing with a fervor that leaves her dizzy and disoriented. It’s all she can do to clutch fitfully at his shirt for purchase, hands curling around his waist, up and around his back to the nape of his neck. _You saw me_ is a broken record in her mind, the same snippets of film played on a loop with each kiss and she can _feel_ it, tastes all of that insufferable Christmas sincerity in every press of lips and tease of tongue and she resolutely _does not care_. Can’t care, not now, not when she _knows_ how that feels, not when she’s felt more in her skin around him in the last few months than she has around anyone in close to sixty years (more, if she traces the roots of her defenses back to Daniel). Each kiss is _you saw me_ and _I know the feeling_ and _I like you, immensely_ and _you can’t steal something that’s been given to you_ , and somewhere in the back of her mind, Regina thinks that no matter how much she may give to him, _freely, willingly_ , there are things beyond a kiss or hundred he’s stolen from her that should make her rightly terrified to keep letting him.

She is not afraid at _all_.

Bemusement at an end, Regina kisses back with equal fervor, pushing and pressing and nipping lightly at his bottom lip any time he pulls back for a half-breath. The itch from earlier is a full on _burning_ now, and she doesn’t waste any more time, slips the hand at his waist up along his chest to curl her fingers around his tie and _pull_ , grinning against his mouth at the startled _oomph_ he lets out as he falls into her farther, pressed flush against her now and oh, _oh_ , fuck, he’s hard against her hip, hot and heavy and fuck, fuck _fuck_. She can’t register much beyond that before he’s moving one of his own hands, dips it down and around to settle at the small of her back for half a moment before foregoing the all-too-polite boundaries and reaching farther down to grope at her ass, pulling them impossibly, impossibly closer. She can’t quite get into any sort of a position she thinks they both want at this point -- can’t even so much as perch her ass on the edge of a shelf or hike up the skirt of her dress enough to grant him better access, _why_ did she have to wear the houndstooth today, damn it -- but any irritation or ire either or them feels at the circumstances is lost when he tears his lips from hers and sucks wet kisses along the column of her throat. She gasps, high and loud and entirely without restraint, tugs at his tie tightly and earns a choked off groan and a stuttering of hips against hers in return. A brief beat of hesitation on his part, muscles tense and straining before he mutters _fuck_ and exhales harshly against her ear, hips jutting roughly against hers with enough force that it knocks a few of the books on the lower shelves loose and sends them smattering to the floor with dull _thunks_.

Neither of them can be bothered to care.

She thinks he might kick a few of them aside rather carelessly so they don’t stumble or slip on them, but she’s not entirely sure, can’t really focus on anything other than the way his body feels practically molded against hers, warm and solid and shit, shit, _shit_. She needs more, needs to be out of this goddamn dress which is _not_ happening right now -- she is _not_ having sex in the public library -- but she needs _something_ to ease the building ache between her thighs, needs fingers against her wet folds and friction against her throbbing clit. So she grants him better access to her neck, arches against him and drags a heel down his calf, moves the hand at his waist down to his hip so she can hook her fingers through a belt loop and tug him against her more firmly, adjusting the angle of his hips just _so_ and yes, _yes_ , that’s good, that’s perfect, that’s --

“ _Ahem_.”

They both startle and still simultaneously but don’t move otherwise, Robin effectively shielding her and their… compromising position from view. Regina slowly sets her foot back on the ground, gently releases her grip on Robin’s… everything and slides her hands around to anchor her palms against his chest and takes a second to catch her breath. Robin lifts his head from her neck but doesn’t glance over his shoulder to where Regina _knows_ Belle is probably glaring at them rather pointedly, and he’s not nearly subtle enough about the way he moves his hand away from her ass, reaching up to grip the edge of a shelf instead. Regina drops her head a little and squeezes her eyes shut, silently _willing_ the angry red flush she knows her cheeks bear to go away.

“If you’re _quite_ finished,” Belle sniffs pointedly, “I’ll _thank you_ to maybe not treat my books so carelessly in the future.”

Robin clears his throat ever so slightly, but his voice is still rough and low and raw when he answers her. “Consider us thanked.”

There’s a long, weighted pause before Regina hears Belle huff out a rather put-out sigh before she stalks off, heels still managing to make enough impact on the carpet to make far too much noise for a librarian’s taste.

Then again, Regina supposes they can hardly be ones to talk right now.

“I am never going to hear the end of this,” she groans, curling in and resting her forehead against Robin’s chest. “She’s going to tell _Ruby_. Work is going to be _unbearable_. I don’t think there’s enough liquor in all of Holiday Land to get me through those conversations.”

“Well,” Robin ventures after a moment of awkward silence, his voice sounding a little less worse for the wear, “you could always just beg off having those conversations until I’m around to have them _with_ you. I mean, from what you’ve told me about Ruby, I imagine she’d get her jollies just as well interrogating me as she does you.”

Regina’s face twists into an annoyed scowl as she blinks back up at him and bats him lightly on the chest. “You’re the _worst_ , you know that?”

Robin just _smiles_ at her, the insufferable idiot, gentle and warm and entirely too amused for his own good. “And yet.”

She holds out for a grand total of fifteen second before her annoyance gives way to begrudging acceptance, reluctant smile replacing her scowl. “And yet,” she concedes, sighing long-sufferingly. He holds the gaze for a few seconds too long, leans in before she’s really ready for it, and it’s only the freshness of Belle’s interruption that forces Regina to inhale sharply and press her fingers against Robin’s lips to deny him the kiss. “Among your _many_ ill-advised ideas,” she says pointedly, “you can count nearly dry-humping in a public library as one I definitely won’t be endorsing again.”

He purses his lips, just a little before pulling his hand away from the shelf and holding it up in surrender. “Alright, alright, fair enough,” he agrees, sighing a bit as her hand falls away. His eyes dart briefly over to her left where he’d set the book she’d selected for him down; his gaze lingers for a moment before turning back on her with an all too mischievous glint. “Although,” he drawls, musing as he leans in close again, “that little gesture over there says otherwise -- all in the name of friendship, of course.”

“Oh, Locksley,” she murmurs, a light laugh bubbling up out of her as she arches a little closer and runs her thumb along his chin. “You and I both know that we are well past the territory of being just friends.” He grins a little wider, drops his mouth open just enough so that her thumb grazes along his lower lip, and even with the earlier interruption, Regina finds that she is not all that inclined to pull away.

In for a penny, in for a thousand fucking pounds, it seems.

“Then what would you consider us to be?” he ventures, and beneath all of the bluster and bravado, she can still hear the twinge of hesitation in his voice, that same protected yearning he’d failed so miserably at concealing from her last month.

She really has no idea how she’s come to know him so well.

“Honestly?” she sighs, dropping her hand back down to his chest. “I don’t know. But,” she adds, leaning in the rest of the way to gently brush her nose against his, “I definitely want to find out.”


	6. April

**April**

He is fucked -- well and truly _fucked_.

The thing is, Robin knows exactly how he got here. He’s never been the sort to half-ass anything, throws two hundred percent of himself into every endeavor and drops pieces of himself on the ground along the way -- fragments of a puzzle he’s not sure ever formed a complete picture. Marian had always said it was one of the things she loved most about him, and he’d given those pieces back to her tenfold.

After the diagnosis, she’d gotten every last piece he had left, and she’d taken them with her when she’d died.

When Santa had recruited him, eight short months after her passing, Robin had been running on the last vestiges of what he’d had left -- mere fragments of his soul that didn’t fit together and were too heavy to lift on his own. The promise of making a difference -- of bringing light into the lives of those deserving (of claiming _justice_ ) -- had been more than enough to make him jump at the offer. A couple of years and a mountain of paperwork in had thrown the opportunity into sharp contrast for him, revealing it for what it really was.

But at his core, Robin is still the same person, even without all of his pieces. He doesn’t have it in him to give up, to accept the shitty hands he’s been unfairly dealt. He is constantly, always striving to make things better, and this job has been no different, in the end. The immortality is something he thinks he could live without -- it doesn’t seem all that fair to have it, with what happened to his Marian -- but he’s certainly grown accustomed how to use it and its accompanying magic to his advantage.

To the advantage of others.

 _Such a bleeding heart_ , Marian had teased, and he had bled dry, for her.

The thing is, even in a short eight years in this position, in this whole new world, Robin has somehow found himself stumbling upon pieces he’d lost over the years. Marian had been taken from him, true enough, but he’d left behind all that his life had encompassed of his own volition ( _of your own free will_ , the back of his mind supplies, and it’s the part of him that sounds more and more like Regina all the time). There’s a price for accepting recruitment, a cost for the gain of magic and immortality and a comfortable life. They’re not allowed to leave without permission; well, they’re not supposed to, but Robin’s never been all that good at abiding by laws, to be quite honest.

And on the Surface, it’s as if they never existed at all.

So he’d lost John but gained Will, had found a better figure in his boss than his father, looks after Snow instead of raising children of his own. And in the last handful of years, each of them has opened doors that Robin had previously shut behind him, allowing him a way back to collect every curved and awkward piece that had been taken from him on the Surface, every piece he’d sacrificed on his way Down. And with each piece he’d reclaimed parts of his soul, each memory a patch over the holes where he’d bled and bled and bled. He is every bit the sum of his parts: fiercely loyal; honorable to a fault; a patron fucking saint to the less fortunate.

_A regular old Robin Hood._

He had _fought_ his way back to something more whole, climbing and clawing his way back Up, and in return, fate has seen fit to grant him a second chance. But there is a part of him, however small, however deliberately forced Down and buried, that is still too scared to take it.

A mere six months in, and Robin is sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that Regina Mills is not someone he could stand to lose. Simply _risking_ that, even in the smallest of pieces, makes him feel like he’s standing at the precipice once more, one wrong step from taking the plunge to drown.

For her, Robin thinks he would go all the way back Down.

In so many ways, he feels as if he has learned _nothing_ from all of this.

But he has, he _knows_ he has -- something Regina never fails to remind him of almost daily at this point. Every encounter with her these days is like facing mirrors at every turn, and every piece that gets reflected back at him is kept safe in Regina’s hands -- appreciated for every one of its flaws. She’s the one to find the proper places for them: tucked in the pages of books; hitching a ride on the fly of an arrow; filling in the spaces of a mask where his eyes have looked but not seen.

Some of his pieces she’s fit with hers, and the places where they join together make him feel as though his soul had never been quite so broken at all.

He is half in love with her already, and that, to a point, makes him wonder if he can fall all the way Down again and not shatter to pieces.

It’s where he is come April, teetering at the edge and ready to take the leap. They’ve yet to put a definitive and clear label on things, he and Regina, always end up off the beaten path whenever they so much as try. They can hardly be blamed though, really; there almost always ends up being something… better to do with their time. And, well, put two reasonably (ridiculously, in Regina’s case) attractive, immortal people with chemistry together and they’re _going_ to have a difficult time keeping their hands off of one another, it simply can’t be helped.

Now, though, Robin thinks he’s ready -- willing, really -- to use their penchant for distraction to their advantage. It’s not as if he’s staking a lot on this -- sex is not the end-all, be-all of things, there are so _many_ ways to show up for someone in the every day -- but it’s more than clear that they’ve been building to this for a while now, each touch a kindling to a fire ready to burn, roar, consume. And with the tension broken, he thinks -- hopes, really -- that they may get the smoke to clear long enough to see each other for what they are.

For what they _want_ to be.

The sight of her at the post Easter party in that positively _sinful_ little navy blue dress as she sits perched along one of the stone walls with a mimosa in hand is enough to have Robin biting back a frustrated groan. She is stunning, always, but there’s something in particular about the way she ups her own game and subverts the holiday expectations at these events -- the way her cut above the rest makes her so _much_ the right kind of wrong against these backdrops -- that has desire pulling low and hot in his belly. He thinks she _knows_ that, too, at this point, plays into his penchant for the contrary and riles him up if only to feed into her own self-satisfaction.

If he makes it through the night _without_ fucking her, he will be genuinely surprised.

The smile she turns on him when he sinks down next to her is full of sincerity and warmth -- she’s glad to see him -- but it’s a little tight around the edges, put-on, like she’s forcing it a bit. His gaze drifts down to the buzz of the party below and he takes in the picture the pieces paint: the lilting music that’s just a hair too loud; the bright pastels that are a bit rough on the eyes; the discordant sounds of the town livestock and the accompanying smell; the painted on faces and immaculate Sunday best of every citizen of Holiday Land that are a pale shadow of the kindness Christmas is supposed to evoke. His gaze shifts back to the drink in Regina’s hand and finds no explanation is needed. “I take it this isn’t really your sort of thing,” he laughs lightly, leaning back on his hands a bit.

Regina takes another sip of her drink and wrinkles her nose pointedly. “However did you guess?” Robin just chuckles, low and under his breath, and bites his lip to keep from teasing too much. It works; Regina softens around the edges just a hair, and her gratitude is still very much present in her expression even after she rolls her eyes. “I figure this sort of thing is really more your speed than mine.”

“You’d think,” Robin sighs, glancing back down at the swarm below.

“It’s not?”

He shrugs a little, lips twisting into a thoughtful frown. “They try too hard,” he says at last. “As a secular holiday, there’s not quite as much depth here. The effort they put into injecting some meaning into the state of things just comes across as a bit too self-important.”

“True,” Regina muses, “but when your competition is as cutthroat as Christmas cheer and charity, it’s not all that surprising.”

Robin shifts his gaze back to her pointedly and levels her with a glare. "That was uncalled for,” he argues, back to teasing a bit. “Clearly you haven’t had enough to drink.”

“I’ve had more than you, anyway,” she throws back easily.

Robin half bites back a grin until she matches him with one of her own, and he forces himself to look away for another moment or two to try and keep his wits about him. Much as he enjoys the ease with which they can fall into their usual banter, it won’t do tonight to let himself be swayed too much by distraction. Physical intimacy or not, Robin needs to keep his wits about him through enough of the evening in order to work up the nerve for the conversation he knows they need (want) to have. A drink or two of liquid courage won’t hurt, but he definitely needs to keep himself in check.

For a few moments, he surveys the general splendor and tries to find things he actually likes in the clash of colors below them. There’s a banner on display on the other side of the town advertising complimentary spa treatments, which Robin supposes is kind. A plethora of garden boxes are stacked at the edges of the farmland for the victory garden incentive, and they’ve even organized an adopt-an-animal event that he thinks even Regina would find trouble finding fault in. At the sight of the strings of lanterns hung along the high walls that run adjacent to where they’re sitting, Robin has to admit that the lighting scheme for the whole town is a nice replacement for the absent sun.

And then his gaze shifts, lands, and settles on a small wooden bench tucked away in the corner on the upper edges of town and surrounded by an elegant floral archway, and his stomach flips unpleasantly at the sight that meets him. “Oh, bloody hell,” he mutters, looking away quickly and rubbing roughly at his eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he dismisses, unable to open his eyes quite yet. “It’s just… my assistant,” he admits uncomfortably, waving in what he hopes is the general direction of where he’d seen her curled up with a younger gentlemen. “The sight of her _necking_ , even with someone her own age, is not really something I ever wanted to see.”

A beat, and then Regina’s making a bemused little sound that he _knows_ means she’s trying not to laugh at him. “She’s… cute.”

Robin snaps his eyes open and levels her with another glare, this one a bit more honest in its incredulity than the last. “She’s _fifteen_.”

“Exactly,” Regina counters, sounding far, far too amused at his discomfort. “She’s fifteen, which means she is really probably not all that interested in any attempts you may make at posturing and playing at being a father figure, here, especially if we’re factoring in years of immortality into her age.”

He works his jaw, just a little, but he forces himself to keep as much composure as he can, not wanting to be caught out. “We’re not,” he drawls, sitting up a little and shifting on the stone. “And I am not about to go _parental_ on her, here. I just… do not have any desire to bear witness to her more amorous encounters.”

Regina glances over her shoulder briefly before turning back to him, shrugging. “They’re at least well concealed, which is more than we could say for most anyone else, especially at the post Valentine’s party.”

The argument has a bit of a different effect than she probably intended, but Robin finds himself grateful for the way her words call upon memories far more pleasant than what he’s just witnessed, forcing his body to relax a little. “Unlike us,” he remarks, arching an eyebrow at her.

Her breath catches in her chest, just barely but he can tell, he knows, he saw, and he hooks into it even as her expression shifts into something playfully patronizing. “We weren’t _necking_ in the haven, Robin.”

“No,” he returns almost gleefully, “we saved that for the library, among other places.” Recognition sparks in Regina’s eyes, begrudgingly bright, and he can’t help but be a bit smug at the way she bites back a smile and her cheeks tinge the lightest shade of pink at the memory of being caught. She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, glances down into her near empty glass and affords him a better view of the bench just beyond.

They’ve moved on from their necking, Snow and her… paramour, but the sight that greets him now isn’t much better, in Robin’s opinion. By all standards, they’re positively _chaste_ in all of their youthful innocence, knees knocking together gently as she reaches out brush the sandy blonde hair from his eyes and he nudges his nose against her own affectionately. It’s all clearly fresh and new and thrilling for them -- a feeling Robin knows well at the moment -- but it’s also strangely familiar, as if they’ve been together much, much longer. Each gesture and glance is full of knowing and promise, and this time when Robin looks away, he feels as though he’s intruded upon something intensely private and intimate.

All at once, he feels a piece of himself fracture in two. While he finds himself immensely glad that he and Regina have (mostly) kept their courtship behind closed doors up to this point, there’s another part of him, broken in its own little rebellion, that longs to have The Conversation at last if only so he can be a bit more free with his regard. He has a feeling that if (when) he’s allowed to be frank about the way he feels -- the high esteem in which he holds the _magnificent_ woman who has senselessly let him into her life -- he won’t be able to shut up about her.

(Idly, he looks forward to annoying Will Scarlet if only to even out the karmic scales a bit.)

Regina riddles him out with unsurprising ease. “You look like you could use a drink, Mister Locksley,” she laughs lightly.

“God, _yes_ ,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face before he rests his chin in hand briefly to cast a tired smile up at her.

She uses magic to conjure a matching drink for him rather than transporting herself -- or worse, _walking_ \-- to the open bar in the lower levels of the town to fetch him something. He takes the flute from her gratefully and raises it up in silent toast, unabashed in the way he downs the whole thing in one go. It’s quiet for a beat or two after he sets the glass down on the stone with a forceful _clink_ , her eyes darting between him and the glass briefly before she ventures, not unkindly, “You want to get out of here?”

“ _Please_ ,” he chuckles dryly. In turn, Regina raises her own glass in a delayed toast before drinking the last sip or two down and setting it beside his own. Together, they rise, Robin draping his usual coat over his arm as Regina slips the strap of her purse onto her shoulder and smooths invisible wrinkles out of her dress, and they’re on their way out of Easter Town without so much as another word or a backwards glance in Snow’s direction, arms brushing companionably against one another as they trek back up the path to the town door.

“So,” he sighs once they’re out in the middle of the Grove, “what now? Did you have some sort of grand plan for our ditching this time around, or is it my turn to come up with an idea?”

“Let’s go with the latter,” she suggests. “Consider it returning the favor for getting you out of an uncomfortable situation.”

“Fair enough,” he allows. He hesitates for half a moment, glancing around the Grove and out to the forest proper where the path leads to the Oversight buildings, before he worries his lip between his teeth and tries to take a measured breath. “Most all the other towns are virtually empty at the moment,” he points out. “We have our fill of options if we’d like to go somewhere a bit more… private.”

Regina’s lips twist into a smile even though he can tell she’s trying very hard not to. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“Well,” he ventures carefully, shrugging in the direction of the door with the green tree, “I could take you on a proper tour of Christmas Town.”

“I’ve been to Christmas Town _plenty_ of times, Robin,” she reminds him, brow wrinkling a little.

“Yes, but not very often outside of the annual party or under unfortunate work circumstances,” he counters. “A proper tour is different, especially when it’s given by someone who lives there.”

Her eyes narrow a little -- she’s clearly trying to figure out what his angle is, here -- but the spark in her irises hasn’t dimmed even in the slightest. She’s game, he thinks, but there’s something more there, behind her eyes. He wonders, briefly, if her expectations meet his own; if they do, he thinks that perhaps what he’s having trouble discerning is the same sense of anticipation and nerves at the prospect they’re facing.

At how long it’s been for her, by comparison.

“Okay,” she says finally. “I mean, against what is probably my better judgement, I _do_ trust you for _some_ reason,” she teases, nudging his arm with hers. “Maybe this will end up being one of your better ideas, for a change.”

And at that, Robin cannot help but grin from ear to ear. “I’m counting on it.”

It’s a bit of an adjustment for his eyes, the shifting light between Easter Town and the Grove and Christmas Town, but his mild discomfort is nothing in comparison to Regina’s when he glances over at her upon arrival. Her shoulders are tense, rigid as she grits her teeth and exhales harshly through her nose, arms wrapped tight around her middle. “ _God_ ,” she bites out, shivering a little. “I always forget how fucking freezing this place is year round when I’m not dressing down in warm sweaters for the party.”

Robin falters a bit at that, feeling bad for the cavalier and careless disregard where the weather’s concerned. He’s used to the constant snow at this point, knows how to dress for it and how to make the most of layers whenever he leaves town. Even the sharp drop in temperature after the sun has set is something he’s grown accustomed to over the years, the sudden chill a mild inconvenience he knows how to avoid or work around. Regina decidedly _isn’t_ used to any of it; Halloween Town is far more mild in its weather patterns, particularly during the day. He can only imagine the sort of shock her body’s going through at the moment, especially without a coat or hat or scarf, in heels and _that dress_ , god, he’s a prat.

“Here,” he offers belatedly, unfolding his coat and holding it open for her. “It’s not much, but it’ll help a bit until we get indoors.”

She ducks into his coat quickly, doesn’t bother looping her arms into the sleeves and instead just pulls the edges around her tight, smiling up at him gratefully even as the cold bites pink against her skin. “Thanks,” she huffs, breath coming out in spirals in the air in front of her. “So tell me,” she ventures, clearly trying to keep her teeth from chattering, “what exactly are the perks of having a Christmas Town native as a tour guide here?”

Robin worries his lip between his teeth again, taking in her shivering frame and the way her legs are still mostly exposed to the winter night air. Keeping her out in the cold for even a fraction of the time it would take to show her around even only the more interesting parts of Christmas Town isn’t an option, he realizes. She’ll lose focus too quickly, grow disinterested and irritable and will probably end up begging off when it gets to be too much. But more than ruining the mood more than he already has, Robin is not at all inclined to be even so much as a passive participant in Regina’s discomfort in any way at all. He’s not _heartless_ , after all.

Carefully, he glances out over the main drag of the town and tries to come up with an alternative, but it’s not until he’s glancing over his shoulder that inspiration strikes. “The advantage of having a native as your guide,” he says matter-of-factly, putting on just a bit to try and distract them both from the shambles of their arrival, “is that I know a perfectly good way to see the whole entire town without throwing yourself into the thick of the usual bustle or tourist traps.”

“Really?” she laughs, sounding a bit less distracted by the cold than before. “And how is that?”

Reaching for her hand, Robin smiles at her with ease and leans in a little closer. “You ascend to the stars,” he says simply, “and enjoy the view.”

She merely arches an eyebrow at him for that, clearly trying valiantly to withhold her usual snarking judgement, but he offers up no further explanation, just adjusts his grip on her hand and tugs her slightly down the path before taking the fork that curves right. He can see a flutter of nerves on her face when he looks back at her, sensing her unease about following the path up the hill in her heels. Robin squeezes her hand a little tighter and takes the hill slower than he normally would, guiding her up the steep and slippery slope toward the hilltop. He keeps careful hold of her, doesn’t let the gap between them grow too far just in case she loses her footing. And in a rare instance, he finds himself grateful for the place magic has in their world; he can only imagine how much more perilous this journey would be if the path were covered in snow.

They reach the top of the hill without much incident, and once they’re on even ground again, Regina finally unleashes her exasperation with an all too audible sigh. “Ascend to the stars,” she mutters, glancing up at the sky briefly before glaring at him pointedly. “You’re so cheesy, _honestly_.”

“I’ll own that,” he laughs, taking her by the shoulders and turning her back toward the town gently, “if you’ll own that you really can’t beat this view.”

At the sight of Christmas Town lit up in flares of whites and reds and greens, smoke spiraling from chimneys across the skyline, Regina’s whole face softens, resignation clear in her irises. “No,” she admits with a sigh, “you really can’t.”

Satisfied that he’s turning the evening around, Robin gently grips her elbow and guides her to one of the tree stumps set up at the edges of the hill, making sure to dust the snow off of the wood before sinking down to sit on top. Regina follows without much hesitation but she’s a little slower about it, careful in the way she arranges his coat around her to create a barrier between her and the cold elements. He doesn’t wrap an arm around her even though they’re alone; it’ll restrict his movement, and there are better ways at the moment he can help keep her warm against the winter chill. Slowly, he shifts closer, scoots in and presses his leg against hers, hand anchored warm and heavy on her knee just below where the hem of her dress hits. Regina leans into him, clearly finding comfort in the warmth of his proximity, and Robin finds he breathes a little easier.

For the most part, she’s relatively quiet as he provides her with a survey of the town. She _hmm_ s politely at his brief breakdown of Santa’s workshop on their far left, makes an inquiry or two about his opinions and interests regarding manufacturing and working conditions. She seems far more interested when their perusal shifts to the next large building over, prompts him into describing the decorations in his office and the capacity of his assistant’s position. She even laughs, loud and bright and clear, when he leans in conspiratorially and tells her of the “Grinch” in office 4B, when they know to avoid him and what methods they can employ to tame the beast. She grows more quiet again when they shift further right still, her reactions to his descriptions of their shopping center whittled down to a singular noise of derision when he mentions the designer who specializes in horrible holiday sweaters.

By the time they reach the edge of the town, Robin’s description of the housing area is brief and perfunctory, punctuated with a vague sweeping of his arm at the large expanse to their right and just below. Regina, however, surprises him when she speaks up again, her hand resting comfortably on the inside of his knee as she leans in a little closer. “Where are you in all of that?”

He blinks a bit, shakes his head to try and keep his focus off of her proximity and touch, forces himself not to entertain the thought of what it would be like for her to drag that hand up, up, up the inside of his thigh. Not now. Not yet. “Um, just… there,” he says, clearing his throat a bit as he leans in and points in the vague area of the northeast quadrant of the housing developments.

She _hmm_ s thoughtfully again, traces featherlight circles on his knee and rests her whole arm atop his leg, her whole body closer than before. “Do you think your neighbors are all still at the post Easter party?” she ventures.

“Positive,” he answers, eyes narrowing a bit as he tries to riddle her out. “Why?”

“Because,” she sighs, sitting up a little straighter and breaking most points of contact between them, “it means I don’t have to worry about keeping quiet.” And once again, when she turns her gaze onto him, there is absolutely no mistaking the intent in her eyes.

Once more, Regina Mills takes the leap on his behalf.

He’s hardly aware of the way his breathing might change or any shift in his expression, can hardly bring himself to do more than stare at her, thunderstruck and yearning and beyond besotted. But his reaction -- or lack thereof -- doesn’t seem to land negatively with her. She sits with it for a beat, two or three or five more, before she’s pushing her herself carefully to her feet, clutching the edges of his coat close to her as a light snow begins to fall from the sky, flakes landing lightly in her hair. She takes a deep breath that he feels at the bottom of his lungs and holds out her free hand in offering, expression as close to neutrally inviting as he thinks she can get. “Lead the way?”

The moment is as an unmanufactured as he thinks it ever could have been.

Somehow, she is always the one taking him by surprise, but he thinks of her earlier teasing about going against her better judgement and realizes, in this moment, that trust is very much a two way street. And there is something about the way she disarms him so thoroughly that is actually altogether _comforting_ , reliable and sensible and safe.

(He could Fall and not shatter, and he would entirely trust Regina not to let him drown.)

Robin places his hand in hers, and lets Regina pull him back Up.

* * * * *

As soon as Robin has locked the front door of his (tiny, _tiny_ ) house behind them and turned back around to face her, Regina is on him, crowding into his space and startling him into falling back against the door with a quiet _thunk_. She grips the edges of his vest tight, coat and purse discarded carelessly over the back of a kitchen chair, and pulls him to her roughly, mouth seeking his for a hard kiss. His hands are curling around her waist almost instantly as he matches her in equal fervor and grins into the next kiss she takes, and the next, until he’s chuckling, low and light in the back of his throat. “That obvious, was I?” he mumbles against her lips.

She breaks off just enough to exhale, nudges her nose against his and smiles even though he can’t see it. “Your attempt to get me alone like this was not exactly subtle, no,” she breathes.

“You’re rather straight to the point yourself, I’ve noticed,” he throws back easily.

“Well,” she murmurs, lips ghosting along the curve of his jaw, “I’m of the opinion that just because we _have_ all of eternity in front of us doesn’t mean we should waste time. Now,” she says, pulling back just enough to look him in the eyes, “are we going to stand here flirting and… _necking_ the rest of the night,” that earns her a bubbling laugh and a half-groan but he does not tear his gaze away from hers, “or are you going to make me scream?”

He exhales, heavy and sharp and absolutely affected, but Robin meets her challenge with one of his own just like he always does, ducks back and presses his lips warm and wet against her ear. “You don’t really strike me as the type,” he mutters, nips at her earlobe and tightens his hands around her waist as she arches against him with a slight gasp, “though you’d be an awful Halloween Town stereotype if you were.”

“Only one way to find out,” she argues airily, and Robin’s mouth is back on hers faster than she can even draw breath.

She uses her grip on his vest to tug him forward as she stumbles back toward the bed, shoves at it roughly to try and force it off of him, pleased that he doesn’t tear his lips away when his hands leave her just long enough to shrug it off for her. Time can’t seem to move fast enough for her, skin _burning_ with all the vibrating anticipation of a livewire after weeks of teasing, toeing the line and coming up to the precipice only to linger at the edge, waiting. And it’s _him_ , it’s _Robin_ in all of his disarming charm and smug satisfaction and self-righteous activism, blue and bright and burning under her skin and fifty years is _nothing_ , she thinks, compared to time she’s spent wanting his body bare and flush against hers. She itches, burns, moves too fast and tries to kick off her heels and tug his shirt from his pants simultaneously. Her hands skim up under the hem of his shirt, drag and dance around the skin of his belly and waist and back, hot to touch, and he’s stuttering out a gasp as their lips disconnect for a brief second when she loses the additional height.

She’s rocking up on the balls of her feet and pressing back in immediately, hands skimming skin as she sneaks and shoves the shirt up and over his head, dropping it to the floor. She busses a kiss against his lips, another and another, affectionate and warm and full of want, but she’s lost him somewhere in there, each kiss more distracted than the last. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles against her mouth, breaking with a breath and resting his forehead against hers for a moment. “I just -- it’s been a long time.”

“Tell me about it,” she murmurs, hands shifting away from his skin to settle at his hips, fingers hooking through the belt loops on his pants.

“Since… Before?” he ventures, and he sounds so, so careful with it.

Regina brushes her nose against his, gratitude swelling in her chest. “Since Before,” she affirms gently, and the soft puff of air Robin lets out is a pretty good indicator, she thinks, that his experience might not be quite so different from her own.

“I think you’ve got me beat on that one,” he admits.

“I’m not really looking at it as a competition,” she teases.

It works: his lips are brushing lightly against hers in no time, hands settling at the small of her back and pulling her close. “You really have _no_ idea how mad I am for you, do you?” he mumbles between kisses.

“I think I’ve got some idea,” she chuckles, dragging her teeth along his bottom lip as she pulls away. “I mostly just want to know what it feels like with a few less layers between us.”

“Alright, alright, I can take the fucking hint,” he grumbles, teasing. “No more wasting time, yeah?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” she sighs, curling against him as his fingers find the zipper on the back of her dress and pull down. She shivers a little at the press of his fingertips along her bare back as he pulls and pushes the dress into a position where she can slip out of it more easily, and, okay, she can see where he may have needed the minute to pull himself together once it’d really started to sink in that they were doing this. But she doesn’t want the minute, doesn’t want to stop or pause or give herself the chance to overthink any part of this lest she get overwhelmed and consumed by it, so she forces her attention to the present, to the here and now and the feel of the deliciously warm, solid man against her. She drops her gaze down as he starts to pry her dress off of her, distracts herself with tugging open and down the button and zipper of his pants, doesn’t question where or when he’d toed off his socks, shoes.

The second they are both down to undergarments, they abandon the pool of clothes on the floor in favor of reaching for all that gloriously bared skin, bodies flush against one another as her hands curl up and around to anchor on his shoulders, his fingers sinking and digging deliciously into her hair. He’s the one leading now, kisses fervent and hot as he slips his tongue into her mouth, urges her back with knocking knees toward the bed properly until her legs hit the edge of the mattress, nearly buckling her. But he’s there, a hand on the small of her back to keep her balanced and upright, mouth never leaving hers and she is _burning_ alive against the Surface of the sun.

Regina has not felt this in her skin in a long, _long_ time.

She feels so much more hyper-aware of every point of contact than she did before, loses herself in the way his lips drag and suck hot and wet along her neck, the scratch of his nails against her scalp and the hard press of his cock against her belly. “ _Fuck_ ,” she bites out, squeezing at his shoulders when his lips press, suck, nip at a spot just below her ear.

“Getting there,” he murmurs, hand sliding forward to squeeze briefly at her hip before he puts a little space between them. “Sit.”

She can’t even find it in her to be annoyed at being told what to do, just sinks down at the edge of the mattress rather ungracefully and raises her eyebrows in silent expectation. Thankfully, Robin doesn’t keep her waiting, evidently in no mood to drag this out any longer than they already have, just hovers over her and leans in to dart a kiss against her lips before hooking his fingers in the edges of her underwear, tugging meaningfully. Regina’s teeth dig into her lower lip as she grins, unabashed and budding with anticipation, and she obliges without so much as a second thought, hips lifting off of the bed just enough to make it easier for him to pull them off of her. She’s distracted, for a brief second, when he pulls back just far enough for her to get a glimpse of his boxers -- silk, she thinks, and sporting a candy cane pattern, she is going to tease him _mercilessly_ for these later.

And then Robin sinks to his knees in front of her, parts her thighs and tugs her closer to him all in the space of about three seconds, and his tongue is against her sex before can so much as blink or breathe. She gasps, sharp and high and from the very bottom of her lungs, and she can’t help the way she curls up and in a little, body tense a little as she tries to re-familiarize herself with the way this feels.

Robin, as it turns out, is very good at reminding her.

Every part of her _aches_ with need as he mouths at her sex, tongue dragging slow and warm and wet against her folds, lips coming together to dart, press, suck gentle kisses to her clit. And then he _moans_ against her, light and low, the fucking bastard, and Regina is barely capable of whimpering out an _unfair_ before he’s back at it with renewed fervor, tongue picking up pace, lips tugging a little harder against her clit with each pass. She wants to watch him, wants to see the spark of desire in his eyes and the playful glint as he teases and builds her toward release, but she can _barely_ handle the sensation of his mouth against her, much less the _sight_ of it, so she props herself up on her elbows and throws her head back, eyes slipping shut as her world narrows down to the feeling of his face between her thighs.

And, well, more than half a century _does_ count for something, in the end, the stark contrast between her own touch and someone else’s, _his_ , feeds into the sense of urgency that no amount of eternity could afford to give her. Her heartbeat is a pulse between her thighs as his tongue drags through her heat, pulls desire wet and warm from her center with every pass, the scratch of his facial hair against the inside of her thighs a delicious little distraction that only adds to the build. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she thinks she’d ordinarily be more embarrassed about being brought to the precipice of her peak this ridiculously quickly, but it’s a fleeting thought, quickly quelled when he flicks his tongue over her clit in quick succession, pressing in close. Her toes curl in the air, muscles in her abdomen tense, and the air in her lungs is so heavy she can barely breathe out a startled _oh_ , face screwing up tight.

When she comes, it’s with a startled shout and not quite a scream, but it’s a very, very near thing.

Robin’s mouth lingers just long enough to guide her gently through coming down, his lips bussing brief kisses along her inner thighs. Everything’s a little blurry when she blinks her eyes open and glances down at him, body slow relaxing against the mattress, but there’s no mistaking the way he smiles against her skin, satisfied and maybe a little smug. And _that_ won’t do, so Regina forces herself into a sitting position, startling him into dropping her legs and pulling back a little, eyes narrowing slightly in confusion. But she’s too quick about it, her vision swimming a little as she sways upright, and she’s forced to grip the edges of the mattress to steady herself. Robin’s hands hover near her, clearly concerned, and she thinks his expression might soften a little, she’s not sure. “Are you --”

“Fine,” she insists. “Those -- off, now,” she demands, her tone brooking no refusal as she gestures aimlessly at his underwear.

“We can wait a moment if you need to --”

“ _Now_ ,” she says, locking eyes with him.

He doesn’t need to be told a third time.

He’s barely straightened up and awkwardly shoved them down and off before she’s pushing herself to her feet and pushing lightly at his chest, forcing him to stumble back a few steps. She’s a little unsteady on her feet, legs a little wobbly as she steps and stumbles sideways and forward, but her focus is _here_ , gaze dropping briefly to where he’s hot and hard and so beyond ready for her. Another gentle shove when she’s close to him again, this time backing him against the cozy looking lounge chair next to the fireplace, and she’s pressing at his shoulder before he can so much as look back and down at what he’s run into, guiding him down to sit. All of the air leaves his lungs at once when he sinks down all the way, thighs spreading a little in anticipation even as his eyes never leave hers.

She climbs onto the chair with him with far less finesse than she probably wants to but finds that she cares very little about coming across as smooth here. She knows she’s made it perfectly clear just how much she _wants_ him, and weeks of longing looks and lingering kisses and hands gripping tight have made it plain that he’s been thinking about this -- has wanted this as much and as long as she has. So she leads with her knees, too, tucks them against the cushion as she straddles him, legs bracketing his. It’s a tight fit, not a whole lot of wiggle room, but it’s comfortable enough -- or it will be, once she adjusts properly. She grips the back of the chair tight, rises up to give herself room to shift her hips and angle herself over him properly. Her chest comes level with his face, breasts tantalizingly close to his mouth, and she’s more surprised than she should be when he reaches up to tug one of the cups of her bra down to expose her nipple, lips a gentle, sucking graze.

It’s like a punch of arousal to her gut, causing her to gasp and buck against him, hips lowering involuntarily until the head of his cock brushes against her wet folds. Robin sucks in a breath, teeths at her nipple a little, and his hands are reaching back and up to undo the clasp of her bra, fingers prying at the straps and tugging the whole thing off, tossing it aside. He takes to the increase in access immediately, thumbs grazing along the underside of her breasts as he nuzzles affectionately in the valley between before moving to the previously unattended breast, tongue flicking teasingly at the nipple there. Regina inhales sharply, arching even closer, and she is _done_ wasting time. She is _more_ than wet enough for the both of them at this point, and she doesn’t wait a second longer before enveloping his cock with her sex and sinking all the way down, down, down.

She tosses her head back and swallows hard, eyes slipping shut as she revels in the way Robin feels better than any other reminder could. She takes half a second to relish the way she opens and stretches around him, the thick, full heat of him filling her up, but that’s all she gets before the full force of Robin’s reaction slams into them both, lips gone from her breast as he presses his forehead hard over her heart and grips her ribs _tight_ , breath caught in his lungs. “Wait,” he chokes out. “Just… _wait_.”

She blinks down at him, breathless, but she does as she asked, brow wrinkling ever so slightly in concern. “Are you alright?”

He nods imperceptibly against her chest, but his hands don’t slacken at all. “Fine,” he whispers, voice shaking. “I just… need a minute.”

But he’s _not_ , he’s _trembling_ beneath her, his hands the only point of contact that he’s forcing calm into, and even in that he’s failing. She pulls back just enough to try and get a better look at his face, manages to _mostly_ not react to the way it causes him to shift inside of her, pressing in all the right places. Carefully, Regina relinquishes her grip on the back of the chair and takes his face in her hands, guiding him into looking up at her properly. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to come into focus, but once they do, his hands relax their grip around the edges of her chest, and the reverent way he looks at her has her heart stuttering in her chest.

If she didn’t know any better, she would _swear_ there was love in his eyes.

(The thing is, she’s not sure she _does_ know better.)

Anxiety flares up in her chest, a flash of light in her eyes and she cannot hit the brakes, can’t take any of it back, can’t face a morning where she wakes and he’s gone and she’s back on the Surface _alone_ and --

Robin’s hand reaches up, tucks her hair behind her ear and cups her cheek, and Regina finds that they’re breathing a little easier now, eyes locked in and bodies trembling only a little in need. “Been a while,” he reminds her, smile effortless and easy. “Trying to last at least a few minutes, here.”

His determined calm is infectious to the last, and her lips pull and twist into a smile as she presses a warm kiss to his lips. “Don’t worry,” she murmurs. “I promise I won’t mind if Christmas comes early this year.”

His nose wrinkles even as he allows another kiss, mild ire clear in his voice. “How long have you been holding onto that one?” he asks, skimming both hands along her back again.

“A while,” she admits, moaning quietly, low and in the back of her throat when she shifts slightly against him. She shifts again, chasing the feeling, rocks a little against him, grinding, and he’s burying his face against her neck with a groan, breath hot against her skin.

“Keep that up and I promise it will,” he mumbles, voice going a little reedy as he clearly starts to lose focus again.

“That’s the general idea,” she gasps out, hands curling around to the back of his neck as she rocks against him a little harder. She’s not sure she could come again, at least not right now; she needs more time, a proper build and renewed friction against her clit, and given the way Robin’s breathing is growing more labored against her neck by the second, she’s pretty positive that’s not going to happen. But it still _feels_ good, enough so that she’s chasing pleasure without seeking its prize at the end. It helps her stay present, rooted to the here and now and Robin of it all, her skin sparking with life even though she’s been far, far removed from the Surface for a long time.

For the first time, she finds she doesn’t miss it quite so much anymore.

It’s a few moments, at most, that they enjoy the universe they’ve created with one another, and nothing exists at all outside of the way their bodies are intertwined, wet and warm and joined together in time. Regina concentrates her efforts on the way she moves, hips undulating rhythmically as she rides him, licking her lips at the way it feels to have him sliding in and out of her in shallow thrusts, his hips canting up to match her movements. The pressure feels so, _so_ good, a gentle ache that builds and blossoms from the inside out, matching each one of his throbbing pulses with her own. She can feel the way her walls flutter around him, wishes she could lean into it longer, but Robin’s breath is short and sharp, hips snapping up a little harder, and she knows he’s not going to last very long.

Gently, Regina uses her grip on Robin’s hair to lift his face from her neck and force him to meet her eyes, and her voice is the calm before a storm when she says, “I want you to come.”

This time, Robin doesn’t need to be told twice.

His hips pause briefly even as she continues her careful, calculated rocking, hands moving quickly from where they’d been skimming gently along the skin of her back. It’s his turn to curl a hand up and around her shoulder this time, but the other snakes down, down, down, spreads her legs open a little farther before grasping firmly at her ass to anchor himself. And then he thrusts up, sharp and deep and fast, and he’s bruising kiss after kiss against her lips as he takes the lead once more. Regina whimpers slightly against his mouth and tightens her arms around him, thighs squeezing rhythmically around his in an effort to try and keep up with the new pace. There’s a dull ache building in the back of her belly, a simmer of something too far off to chase, but Regina falls back into it anyway and lets it fuel things, sex aching pleasantly with every pivot and press of his cock.

And when _Robin_ comes, it’s with a broken kiss and a delayed, guttural groan, hands gripping her tight and pulling her impossibly close to keep her in place.

For her part, Regina feels like she’s cracked open the sun, and she curls into its warmth, content to stay tucked inside.

She is safe, here.

Coming down is different this time, longer and languid and decidedly more sticky. His head falls against the back of the chair, eyes closed and face turned to the ceiling, but even as his grip on Regina’s… everything slackens and relaxes all the way, Robin makes no effort to so much as _move_ , much less pull out. It’s a little uncomfortable for her -- she’d forgotten how messy it was to have someone come inside of her, and her knees are starting to feel a little creaky around the edges from being bent in this position for an extended period of time.

But he seems to have enough presence of mind to be more than generally aware that she’s still on top of him, evident in the way he drags his fingers soothingly along her skin, dancing along her arm, skittering up her spine. The corner of her mouth quirks up into a smile at that, and she settles against him the rest of the way, hands curling affectionately around his waist as she rests her cheek atop the back of the chair next to where he’s reclining, looking thoroughly fucked. “Do you want to go somewhere more comfortable?” she murmurs.

“Probably a good idea,” he mumbles, voice thick and fuzzy around the edges. “Just -- here,” he sighs, tapping at her thighs to try and guide her into a new position. It takes her a few seconds to catch on, but she complies as best she can, unfolding her legs just enough that she can wrap them around his torso and waist without dislodging him. He inhales sharply halfway through, clearly more uncomfortable than perhaps either of them had thought, but he seems better once she’s quite literally wrapped around him, her arms looping around his neck for the purchase she knows she’ll need once he stands.

Gingerly, he rises from the chair, legs about as wobbly as hers had been earlier, but his hold on her is strong, sure, and much like earlier, she very much trusts that he won’t let her fall. It’s a short walk from the chair to the bed -- mere steps at most, his place is so small (about as small as hers, she thinks idly, though their layouts are different) -- but she thinks he feels all of the exertion combined as he settles her gently onto the mattress with a quiet _oomph_ , cock slipping out of her wetly as he pulls back and straightens up. She can hear some of his joints popping back into place as he stretches and twists his body back into comfort and aims to do the same, stretching her legs blissfully and flexing her toes.

Now that she’s away from his heat, though, it strikes Regina just how _cold_ the house -- room, really -- is, and a quick, cursory glance out the kitchen window reveals that the snowfall has picked up pace, falling white visible under the streetlamps outside. She shivers a little as she shifts on the bed and reaches for the corner of the blankets and sheet, seeking warmth. She can see Robin’s face twist with a frown in her peripheral vision, thinks he can still probably see the goosebumps on her skin, the way her nipples have grown stiff and taut in the last couple of moments. She’s half under the covers when an orange glow floods the room, startling her, and it takes her half a moment to realize that he’d used magic to conjure fire and light the kindling in the hearth. “Thanks,” she huffs, smiling a little sheepishly as she burrows under the covers and props her head up on her hand.

“Would’ve lit it earlier,” he murmurs, climbing up behind her into the bed and ducking under the covers himself. “Was a bit distracted when we first arrived.”

Regina _hmm_ s pleasantly and twists around to face him, fatigue settling in around the edges. “I think we found sufficient ways to keep warm.” He chuckles, warm and low, but doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to return her serve this time around. A beat, and then he’s leaning in to press a soft kiss against her lips, his hand seeking a place to rest on her hip atop the duvet. She blinks up at him slowly when he pulls back, once, twice, barely suppressing a yawn, and she can’t help but wrinkle her nose when she realizes what this means, now that they’ve taken this particular plunge. “I suppose we actually have to talk about putting a label on this thing now, don’t we?” she muses, keeping the next yawn under her breath.

The corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile, but he shakes his head slightly, leans in to brush her nose with his own before capturing her lips in one last sweet kiss. “Catnap first,” he decides, yawning a little himself. “Talking after.”

“Deal,” she agrees amicably, smiling sleepily as he shuffles down and burrows against the pillows. His hand slides up, shifts from her hip to her waist, and the only reason she thinks he delays in moving closer to her under the covers is more due to lethargy than actual hesitation. Each of them curls a little closer in kind, legs intertwining beneath the sheets, and she honestly has no idea whose eyes slip shut, first.

The last thing she remembers before drifting off is the sound of Robin’s heartbeat, strong and sure against her ear.

When she wakes, they’ve clearly shifted in their sleep. She’d turned toward the hearth at some point, away from him, but he’d followed her with ease it seems because he’s still pressed against her now, front to back, his arm slung cozily around her waist. The fire is still roaring in the hearth, spitting and popping and crackling away, and it takes her longer than she’s proud of to realize that it’s because he’d used magic to light it in the first place. She doesn’t even really put two and two together until she glances at the clock on his nightstand and has to do a double take when she marks the time. It’s a little past six -- _in the morning_ \-- which means that it’s not only Tuesday and she has to be at work in a couple of hours, but she _spent the night without even meaning to_.

She tenses a little at that, breath caught in her chest for a moment, but any sense of shame she thinks she’d normally feel at this level of presumption is gone before it really has a chance to build. She doesn’t think he’d care, honestly, but there’s a difference between not caring and actively wanting her there. And he’d wanted her there, clearly -- it was the entire reason he invited her to Christmas Town at all, she’s sure -- but she doesn’t think either of them had planned on her staying over. Still, she finds it hard to give that flare of anxiety any sort of credence when he’s curled around her like this, arm heavy over her and cock half-hard against her ass, his lips grazing against the nape of her neck in his sleep.

Even without The Conversation, Regina thinks she understands perfectly well what it is Robin had been trying to do last night: he’d carved out a more permanent space for her here, with him, and every underlying implication tells her that he is more than ready to go all in.

More than anything else, Regina thinks she surprises herself a little with the notion that maybe she doesn’t feel all that differently.

(She wants to stay.)

But she can’t have any version of that conversation by herself, and she’s not sure they’re even going to have _time_ this morning, honestly. She has enough time to linger a little -- use the restroom and collect her clothes from where Robin had strewn them about the floor last night, maybe make a cup of coffee or tea -- before she has to go home to shower and redress for work. Robin starts a full hour after her during their off-seasons, so she’s honestly a little loathe to wake him this early just to have a hurried version of a conversation that they should devote more time to.

(Eternity stretches in front of her, in front of them, and Regina really, _really_ doesn’t want to wait much longer.)

There are things she _can_ do on her own, though, so it’s with all the care in the world that Regina slowly extracts herself out from under Robin’s embrace and shifts off of the bed. She winces a little at the dry, tacky feeling between her thighs, the prospect of a shower suddenly a lot more appealing, but she forces herself to live with it for the time being; a shower will have to wait. Quietly, she tiptoes her way around the bed, bending down to pick up her underwear before she ducks into the bathroom just behind the kitchen to freshen up a little.

When she emerges, she passes by the closet that’s tucked away behind the living area/bedroom -- something she hadn’t had the opportunity to see last night (had been a little too preoccupied to _ask for a proper tour_ , and she’s biting back a smile at the mere memory of it, warmth blossoming in her chest). She almost passes it up entirely, but something familiar catches her eye in her peripheral vision, causing her to pause and do a double take, moving a little closer to investigate. She sighs in utter exasperation when she realizes it’s the ugly sweater he’d worn to the post Christmas party last year -- a green number with a fox along the front, the words _Happy Foxing Day!_ woven in a too-extravagant script. It’s just as hideous as she remembers it, tacky and ridiculous and, okay, honestly a little more clever than she’d been anticipating. But she remembers her promise to make him see reason about this crime against fashion, so it’s with a bolt of inspiration that Regina carefully removes the sweater from its hanger and adjusts it in her hands, slipping it on over her head and sliding her arms into the sleeves.

She is _positive_ that he’ll see reason when he realizes that not even she can pull this thing off.

She pads back out into the common area like that -- barefoot and clad in only her underwear and his ugly sweater, hair still mussed from sex and sleep -- and turns into the designated kitchen area, tucking her hair behind her ear as she surveys the layout. It, like everything else in his house, is small, barely has enough components to comprise a proper kitchen at all, and she wonders how he even moves around in here without knocking things over constantly. But the size means she has precious little places to look for her morning fix of caffeine, so she starts with a set of cabinets on one side and starts her search, the only sound in the room the crack-pop of the fireplace.

She’s stretched up on tiptoe moving a few things around in one of the upper cabinets to see if there’s tea hiding in the back when Robin’s voice startles her from her silent, solitary search. “You know,” he muses, voice low and rough with sleep, “I know perfectly well what you’re doing.”

Regina comes down to rest flat on her feet again, hands anchored on the edge of the counter as she glances sideways at him, eyebrow arched expectantly. “Oh?” she feigns, trying not to let the sight of him like this -- half-propped up in bed, hair askew and chest bare, knee bent comfortably in unknowing invitation -- throw her too far off her game.

“You’ve donned that sweater in the hopes that you’ll convince me of how terrible you think it is,” he susses out correctly, smile sleepy and bemused as he relaxes against the pillows. “I’ve got news for you though, darling: I’m afraid you have honestly never looked sexier than you do in that little number.”

Regina _tsk_ s in derision, shaking her head in disappointment. “And _I’m_ afraid,” she sighs dramatically, crossing the room toward the bed, “that the fact that you think so does not help your argument that you have good taste.”

“Ah, well,” he murmurs, beckoning her closer with his hand, “I suppose I may be a little biased in this particular regard.” The compliment finally lands the way she’s sure he intended, and she fails miserably at trying not to demur, cheeks flushed and lip worried between her teeth, hair tucked nervously behind her ear. He takes her hand once she’s close enough, tugs gently to get her to sit next to him on the bed, thumb rubbing affectionately across her knuckles. “It’s not too forward, is it,” he ventures, voice a little more vulnerable than before, “if I say that last night was honestly the best… _sleep_ I’ve had in a long time?”

Her lips twitch with the phantom of a smile. “No,” she says, “it’s not.”

“Then I’d be safe in say, extending an invitation,” he continues, “and offering to cook you breakfast?”

She melts a little at that, can’t help herself, and she’s honestly kind of disappointed that she has to say no. “That sounds lovely, but… I can’t stay long,” she says quietly, redirecting the conversation to the place she knows it needs to go. “I need to get home, get ready for work, but… we should probably talk about this,” she owns, flicking her eyes back up to look at him.

“We really should,” he sighs, running the fingers of his free hand through his hair. “I’d hoped, last night, that we’d have the chance, but given… the state of things, I’m not all that sorry that breaking the tension took priority.”

She offers him a small smile and forces herself not to shift uncomfortably on the mattress. “Me either.”

It’s his turn to pull his lip between his teeth, considering her for a moment. “As it seems we both rather… enjoyed ourselves last night,” he says, clearly choosing his words carefully, “I guess my first inquiry would be to know if… this,” he adds, gesturing vaguely between them, “is going to become a regular thing, or if we should perhaps just simply… leave it at this.”

Regina takes a long, measured breath to steady herself, allowing herself the awkwardness of shifting a little uncomfortably on the bed as she surveys him, thinking. “Do you… want it to become a regular thing?”

His lips twist into a half smile. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

“Yeah,” she agrees idly, glancing down at where they’re holding hands atop the duvet, “I think we do.”

He’s quiet for another beat or two before he takes his cue. “Beyond that -- beyond this, beyond what transpired between us last night,” he says, voice a little more earnest than before to the point that it actually makes her look up at him properly, brimming with curiosity, “I… would very much like the opportunity to show up for you in the everyday, Regina Mills.”

Her heart stops for a full three beats, consumed entirely by the sun, and while she doesn’t know entirely where she began, she knows now, without a shadow of a doubt, that she is already halfway Falling, and six months in, she would entirely trust Robin to be a safe place to land.

She could be _alive_ down here, with him.

Her smile blossoms back onto her face, breaks open and free, and she resolutely does not dwell on the way her eyes have grown warm and wet. “I’d like that, too,” she says, “for me, and for you.”

The way his whole person relaxes at the admission and agreement pulls at her pride, stemming any tears that may have threatened to even so much as brim on her lashes. “Well,” Robin says, bright and happy and maybe entirely a little too pleased with himself, “I have to say that I am much more looking forward to what it’s like to you have you in my corner rather than in the opposing one.”

“I suppose that’s my fault, “ she sighs dramatically, shifting a little closer to him. “I did make an allowance for Christmas coming early last night. You’re probably going to get away with just about everything now.”

Robin’s jaw jumps a little, a tick telling her that he’s fighting natural irritation with playful banter and camaraderie, but it’s gone almost as soon as it appeared, replaced with an all too smug smile. “I thought I already did.”

Regina snorts in half-derision, half-amusement, choosing to run with the shift in conversation. “Speaking of,” she muses, quirking an eyebrow at him, “don’t you think that dating a woman from Halloween Town is at _all_ naughty?”

The blue in his eyes bursts bright with a mischievous glint. “Well,” he drawls, shifting a little closer to her himself, “while not terribly commonplace, inter-holiday fraternization isn’t technically against any rules or laws, as I’m sure you well know. But if it were, I’d simply remind you,” he adds, crowding into her personal space, lip bit in that _delicious_ little way that tells her he’s about to say something stupid and infuriating and clever, and his voice drops a whole register for it, “that I _do_ fuck around with the naughty list regularly.”

_God damn it._

Her mouth is pressed hard and hot against his in a second, fingers curling around his hand and squeezing tight. He smiles into the second kiss, smug and satisfied, and she goes back in for a third to kiss it _off_ , sucking at his bottom lip as payback. But it doesn’t work, he just keeps _smiling_ into the kisses she steals from him, and she can hear the beginnings of a laugh bubbling at the back of his throat. “Well, well, well, would you look at that,” he chuckles, pulling back just long enough to try and get the last word in edgewise. “It seems you’re rather fond of my _terrible jokes_ , after all.”

“Remember what I said about getting in your own way?” she says, pointedly arching an eyebrow at him even as she clambers up onto the bed properly, crowding in close enough to make her intentions clear. “This is one of those times.”

“I will take that under advisement,” he dismisses cheerfully. And lightning quick, his hand is gripping her waist and flipping them to pin her back against the mattress, prompting a surprised sound out of her that is entirely a _laugh_ and not at all anything even remotely resembling a _giggle_. Her eyes catch sight of the ceiling as he moves the rest of the way over her, and the only reason she doesn’t roll her eyes at the fact that he’s about to kiss her under strategically placed mistletoe that she _knows_ he conjured with magic sometime this morning is because his mouth is on hers and he’s settled between her thighs before she can even manage it.

Outside, the sun peeks up over the horizon in Christmas Town, illuminating the fresh new dusting of snow on roofs and ground and treetops alike. Inside Robin’s home, the wood in the hearth pops and crackles in perfect punctuation as the fire consumes and burns in tandem with renewed passions. And full of _some_ sort of holiday spirit, Regina decides that just this once, she can afford to be late.


End file.
